Simulation and Design of Multi-band Planar

Meandered Monopole Antenna for Mobile Phone

Application
Zhixi Liang, Hongyan Jiang, Yunliang Long
Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering
Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, P.R. of China

Abstract-In this paper, a novel multi-band planar monopole 960 MHz), DCS (1720-1880 MHz), PCS (1850-1990 MHz),
antenna for mobile phone application is presented. With the UMTS (1920-2170 MHz), WiBro (2300-2390 MHz) and ISM
meandered structure, the antenna generates three resonant (2400-2480 MHz) bands. The proposed antenna is printed on
frequencies at the first resonant mode (0.25λ mode) and a
the thin FR4 substrate, very promising to be embedded inside
resonant frequency at the dual-resonant 0.5λ mode. The total
bandwidth (for S11< -7.5 dB) is more than 900 MHz, which the mobile phone. Parametric study is carried out using
achieves operation at six different working bands covering the simulation software HFSS.
GSM/DCS/PCS/UMTS/WiBro/ISM bands. The simulated results II. ANTENNA DESIGN
show a good impedance matching and radiation. With the planar
structure, the antenna can be easily built in mobile phone. Fig. 1 shows the proposed antenna, which is printed on the
I. INTRODUCTION top of an inexpensive FR4 substrate with a thickness of
1.6mm and a dielectric constant of 4.4. The antenna occupies
With rapid development of the cellular communication, an area of 38 × 18 mm2, when a 50 Ω microstrip line is used to
mobile phones are working in more and more wireless feed the planar monopole antenna. On the other side of the
communication systems. Therefore, mobile phone antennas substrate, there is a ground plane, with a size of 45 × 73 mm2.
have to cover more working bands, including the The distance between the antenna patch and the ground plane
GSM/DCS/PCS/UMTS/ISM bands. As the space for the is set 4 mm.
mobile phone antennas is very limited, many researches are Fig. 2 shows the detail structure of the antenna, which
working on the miniaturization and multiband for mobile consist of two sub-patches, sub-patch1 (AB) and sub-patch2
phone antenna [1]-[3]. (AE). Sub-patch2, which is much longer than the sub-patch1,
Planar monopole antennas have been widely used in mobile is bended in S shape giving two turning points as C and D. D
phone for lots of advantages, such as small size, low profile, is approximately the midpoint of (AE) and so is C to (AD).
low cost and easy to work at multiband etc. To generate two What is more, the length of (AB) is almost equal to (AC). It
resonant frequencies in a single planar monopole antenna, the should be noted that, most part of the patches is placed
typical ways include bending the resonant path [4] and adding horizontally, which enhances the coupling between the
a branch line [5]. Combining the two methods above, three resonant paths. This structure is very promising to generate
resonant frequencies has been achieved, but with UMTS band resonant frequencies at different modes.
uncovered [6]. In the recent studies, different methods have
been bought forward to achieve more resonant frequencies and
bandwidth on planar monopole antennas. Inserting a L-shaped
slit on the dual-band antenna [7] and slotting the ground plane
[8] can generate more than three resonant frequencies, but
either the UMTS or ISM band is not covered. Adding shorting
point to the resonant patch [9] is able to achieve enough
bandwidth for the operations of GSM/DCS/PCS/UMTS/ISM.
However, via hole is a must for the shorting point, which is
not convenient for fabrication.
In this paper, we present a novel planar monopole antenna,
which is able to generate four resonant frequencies just by
adding a branch and bending the antenna structure. Three of
the resonant frequencies can be adjusted separately, while the
fourth resonant frequency is the dual mode of the former one.
With the definition of -7.5 dB return loss or 2.5:1 VSWR, the
obtained bandwidths cover the operating bands of GSM (880- Figure 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna.

978-1-4673-2185-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE


Figure 2. Structure of the proposed antenna.
operation, it is observed in Fig. 4 (b) that the surface current
distribution in the dual-resonant 0.5λ mode. The antenna also
generates quarter wave length mode at 2050 MHz and 2450
MHz, which resonant lengths are about 48 mm (current flow
from point A to point D) and 36 mm (current flow from point
B to point C). The resonant lengths of the four corresponding
frequencies are relatively larger than 0.25λ0 of a simple
straight strip. This behavior is largely due to the strong
coupling effects within the meandered structure. The
relationship between the resonant frequencies (f1, f2, f3, f4) and
the length (L1, L2, L3) is showed as follows:

f1 ~ 1 /( L1  2 L) (1)
III. SIMULATED RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
f 2 ~ 2 /( L1  2 L2 ) (2)
HFSS software was used to simulate and optimize the
f 3 ~ 1 / 2 L2 (3)
properties of the proposed antenna. Through optimization and
adjustment based on HFSS, the final antenna size parameters f 4 ~ 1 /( L2  L3 ) (4)
are shown in Fig. 3.
With all the size parameters set, the simulated return loss The findings above coincide with the simulated results for
for the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 4. It is clearly seen the return loss relative to changes in the distance L1, L2 and L3.
that four resonant frequencies are adjusted at the proper places. Fig. 6 (a) shows the simulated return loss in response to the
Determined by 2.5:1 VSWR, the lower bandwidth reaches changes in L1. When the L1 is shortened, both f1 and f2 rise.
100MHz to cover the GSM (880-960 MHz). The upper band This is because the current flow through the whole long patch
has a bandwidth as large as 800 MHz, which covers the DCS
(1720 - 1880 MHz), PCS (1850 - 1990 MHz), UMTS (1920 -
2170MHz), WiBro (2300-2390 MHz) and ISM (2400 – 2484
MHz) bands.
To find out the working mechanism of the proposed
antenna, the excited surface current distributions at 920, 1800,
2050 and 2450 MHz are obtained from the HFSS simulation.
In Fig. 5 (a), the current flow from point A through C, D, then
to E. It is clear that the antenna is resonating in the first
resonant mode (0.25λ mode), when the total resonant length is
about 105 mm, almost 0.31λ0 at 920 MHz. For the 1800 MHz

Figure 3. Detail size parameters of the antenna structure.

Figure 5. Simulated current distributions at (a) 920 MHz, (b) 1800 MHz, (c)
Figure 4. Simulated return loss for the proposed antenna. 2050MHz, (d) 2450MHz.
in different modes at f1 and f2. As can be seen in Fig. 6 (b),
when L2 lengthens, it causes all the resonant frequencies to
fall. The reason can be found from the common point between
Fig. 5 (a), (b), (c), and (d) that strong current distributes in
(AC) at all resonant frequencies. In Fig. 6 (c), it can be seen
that f4 changes in response to changes in the distance L3.
Meanwhile, f2 is influenced slightly, because we can see the
coupling between (AB) and (AC) in Fig 5 (c). Therefore, the
resonant frequencies can be determined by L2, L1 and L3
sequentially, adjusting f3 and f4 first, f1 and f2 at last. Figure 7. Simulated return loss for different ground plane length, represented
The parameters of the ground plane have also been studied. as g, other parameters are the same as studied in Fig. 4.
Fig. 7 shows the simulated return loss results for the length of
ground plane varied from 80 to 110 mm. As the length of the
ground plane is lengthened, the impedance matching is
improved in the lower band, while the upper band achieves
worse matching. In this study, the ground length is chosen as
95mm for the balance between the lower band and upper band.
In Fig. 8, it can be seen that better matching but less
bandwidth is obtained when the distance between the antenna
and the ground enlarges. This is because the height of the
antenna has a great influence on the radiating ability for Figure 8. Simulated return loss relative to changes in the distance between
ground and antenna, represented as d, other parameters are the same as
monopole antennas. studied in Fig. 4.

Fig. 9 shows the simulated radiation patterns at 920, 1800,

2050 and 2450 MHz for the proposed antenna. Fig. 9 (a) gives
the radiation pattern at 920 MHz, as good as those of
conventional simple monopole antennas. However, as the
frequency goes higher, the difference between the radiation
patterns turns more obvious. In general, a good omi-
directional radiation is achieved for all frequencies.

Figure 6. Simulated return loss relative to changes in the size parameters (a)
L1, (b) L2 and (c) L3.

Figure 9. Simulated radiation patterns of the proposed antenna.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
A novel planar monopole with meandered structure for
multi-band operation in the mobile phone has been proposed.
From the simulated results, the antenna could obtain wide
impedance bandwidth, which covers the operation bands of
GSM/DCS/PCS/UMTS/WiBro/ISM. What is more, a good
omi-directional radiation is achieved within the working bands.
The proposed antenna is very attractive for mobile handset
antenna applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is funded jointly by the Research Program of
Guangzhou under Grant 2010Y1-C401, and by the Research
Program of Huizhou under Grant 2011C010002006.
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