4554 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO.
9, SEPTEMBER 2014
Compact Agile Antenna Concept Utilizing
Reconfigurable Front End for
Wireless Communications
Pevand Bahramzy, Ole Jagielski, Simon Svendsen, and Gert Frølund Pedersen
Abstract—The conventional full-duplex radio communication
systems require that the radio transmitter (Tx) is active at the
same time as the radio receiver (Rx). The Tx and the Rx are using
separate dedicated frequency bands and the Tx-Rx isolation is en-
sured by duplex filters. However, increasing number of frequency
bands crave for multiband and multimode operation, which either
require agile duplexers or a bank of narrow-band filters with a
switch. While practical agile duplexers are not available, a bank
of narrow-band filters with a switch is bulky and incurs switching
loss. This paper proposes an approach that separates the Tx and
Rx chain throughout the front end (FE). The complexity of the
FE is reduced dramatically by replacing the duplex filters with
tunable filters and closely integrating the tunable antennas in the
FE, providing filtering which can be used to lower requirements
for the tunable filters. For this purpose, very small narrow-band
antennas are designed, which can cover 1710–2170 MHz by using
tunable capacitors. Simulations and measurements of the antenna
concept are carried out in the proposed FE architecture, serving
as a proof of concept.
Index Terms—Capacitive loaded antenna, high- antenna,
inductive loaded antenna, MEMS, radio frequency (RF) front-end
(FE), Rx antenna, transmitter-receiver isolation, tunability, Tx
antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE cellular industry has seen dramatic changes over the
past 20 years. The radio has evolved from a single-mode
dual-band GSM system to a Quadruple-mode many-band (4
GSM bands, 5 UMTS bands with HSPA+, 27 LTE FDD bands
Manuscript received November 05, 2013; revised February 20, 2014; ac-
cepted May 14, 2014. Date of publication May 20, 2014; date of current ver-
sion September 01, 2014. This work was supported by the Smart Antenna Front
End (SAFE) project within the Danish National Advanced Technology Foun-
dation–High Technology Platform.
P. Bahramzy is with Intel Mobile Communication Denmark Aps, Nørre-
sundby, Denmark, and also with the Section of Antennas, Propagation and
Radio Networking (APNet), Department of Electronic Systems, Faculty of
Engineering and Science, Aalborg University, DK-9220 Aalborg, Denmark
(e-mail: pevand.bahramzy@intel.com; pb@es.aau.dk).
O. Jagielski and S. Svendsen are with Intel Mobile Communication
Denmark Aps, Nørresundby, Denmark (e-mail: ole.jagielski@intel.com;
simon.svendsen@intel.com).
G. F. Pedersen is with the Section of Antennas, Propagation and Radio Net-
working (APNet), Department of Electronic Systems, Faculty of Engineering
and Science, Aalborg University, DK-9220 Aalborg, Denmark (e-mail: gfp@es.
aau.dk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2014.2325946
0018-926X © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
and 12 LTE TDD bands) system. This evolution is driven by
both CMOS technology and smart integration in the radio fre-
quency (RF) front-end (FE) [1]. While the CMOS may continue
to scale down, the analog FE poses challenges to scaling due
to physical limits. Today, due to the large number of frequency
bands and modes of operation, the antennas pose particular chal-
lenges to scaling due to fundamental limitations [2], [3]. Fur-
thermore, the transceiver RF FE architecture is complicated a
lot because of the increased number of bands and band com-
binations. For the RF FE to be able to support the continuing
evolution, new and smart ways of integration in the FE must be
introduced. Co-design of the RF FE and the antenna system is a
promising approach that can help miniaturizing the RF FE and
antenna, while covering the increased number of bands.
In such an approach it is proposed to have separate transmitter
and receiver chain throughout the FE. As mentioned in [4]–[8],
such a concept requires one antenna for the transmitter chain
(Tx antenna) and one for the receiver chain (Rx antenna). Since
the Tx and Rx antennas only need to cover one LTE channel at
a time (channels in LTE are between 1.4 MHz and 20 MHz [9]),
they can be designed to be quite narrow-band. The resonance
frequency of these high-Quality factor ( ) antennas can then
be changed through electrical means. The space occupied by
the antennas is greatly reduced as one single resonant element
can be used to cover all the bands. Furthermore, these antennas
are designed for their highest targeted band of operation which
result in small size elements [10]. However, high- antennas
have the disadvantage of having relative high current densities
and fields per area, leading to loss issues. Therefore, special care
must be taken when designing these antennas.
The Tx, Rx antennas exhibit high isolation because of the
narrow-band characteristic and frequency offset [7], [8], pro-
viding filtering which can be used to eliminate the duplex filters
from the FE architecture, leading to huge space and cost savings.
Antenna frequency agility is known for long time and can
be achieved through different means. In [11]–[13] tuning is
obtained by varying the relative permittivity or permeability
of the substrate, where the main drawbacks are the fairly high
fields created in the substrate, resulting in degraded efficiency.
Some examples of varactor used for frequency reconfigurability
are given in [14]–[18], where the relative high bias voltage
levels and linearity are the main limitations. In papers like
[19]–[21], field effect transistors (FET) are utilized to obtain
tuning. FETs have an inherent tradeoff between on-resistance
(Ron) and off-capacitance ( ), where Ron affects the device
BAHRAMZY et al.: COMPACT AGILE ANTENNA CONCEPT UTILIZING RECONFIGURABLE FRONT END 4555

while increases the parasitic loading due to the off

branches. Besides, power handling and linearity, the main
drawbacks of FETs are the high insertion losses. More recent
tuning components RF micro-electro-mechanical systems
(MEMS) are approaching maturity as they have started being
implemented in commercial mobile phones [22]. RF MEMS
provides performance enhancements to many of the afore-
mentioned deficiencies. The RF path is through metal traces
on a mechanical device so the , isolation and linearity are
much higher, and the DC voltage is physically separate from
the RF path, leading to quite high voltage handling. The main
disadvantage of this technology is cost [1].
RF MEMS are, due to the aforementioned important perfor-
mance metrics, chosen as the tuning component for the proposed
antenna design. The frequency bands LTE band I, II and III
(1710–2170 MHz) are selected to get proof of antenna concept
before going to the more challenging bands below 1 GHz. This
work puts its main focus on the antenna design for the proposed
FE architecture. The paper is organized as follows: Section II
describes the separate transmitter and receiver chain architec-
ture, whereas Section III explains the challenges with high-
antennas. In Section IV, the benefits of capacitive loaded versus
inductive loaded antennas are considered. The proposed antenna
concept introduced in Sections V and VI shows the fabricated
prototype containing the antennas for the separate transmitter
and receiver chain architecture. Conclusions end the paper in
Section VII.
Fig. 1. (a) Traditional RF FE; (b) STRC architecture.
II. SEPARATE TRANSMIT AND RECEIVE CHAIN
Due to the numerous supported frequency bands in today’s
narrow-band antennas are exploiting tuning to cover all the fre-
smart mobile platforms, each separate signal chain requires a
quency bands required. The tunability of high- antennas are
duplex filter, power amplifier (PA), etc. Using the traditional FE
achieved using tunable digital capacitor array (TDCA) [29]. For
architecture to support more than 40 LTE frequency bands [9],
each mode or application in the terminal the bandwidth is re-
more parallel signal chains will have to be added in the phone.
duced to just the needed channel bandwidth (GSM channel is
This leads to many sub-antenna systems or one very broadband
200 KHz, UMTS channel is 5 MHz and LTE channels vary be-
antenna [23]–[28]. While broadband antennas are large and oc-
tween 1.4 MHz and 20 MHz [9]).
cupy more space in order to be efficient, multiband antennas
Although this concept assumes frequency division duplex
with reasonable performances become very difficult to design
(FDD), it can be used in time division duplex (TDD) systems
in small mobile form factors. All this adds up to a rather bulky
as well, by e.g., tuning the tunable filter way out of band. In
mobile device that has to be charged very often to support data
principle, the same concept can be used for FDD and TDD in
intensive applications. With the consumer demand pointing to
the same FE chain.
very thin devices with high data rates and long battery lifetime,
it is increasingly obvious that a new approach to the RF-signal
chain is long overdue. III. CHALLENGES WITH HIGH- ANTENNAS
As illustrated in Fig. 1(a), the traditional way of separating To provide sufficient rejection at close frequency offsets be-
Tx and Rx in a duplex radio system is by employing a duplex tween transmit and receive frequencies, the antennas need to be
filter (1 for each band) consisting of two filters combined before narrow-band. The high- nature of the narrow-band antennas
the antenna, where one of them filters the transmitter signal for engenders the following design challenges: loss in the con-
noise in the receive band and the other one filters the receive ductor, antenna carrier, interconnection and tuning/matching
signal for energy outside the receive band. The duplex filter is components. In addition, there are higher maximum rating
typically designed to give 40–60 dB attenuation in order to ful- requirements for the active components. All these challenges
fill the system requirements. are due to extremely high current densities and high fields
Using separate transmit and receive chain (STRC), shown associated with the high- antennas [30].
in Fig. 1(b), the conventional expensive multiple duplex filters Due to the high current density any ohmic resistance, even
and the appurtenant switches can be removed. Instead the Tx small, can lead to undesired thermal loss. The conventional way
and Rx chains have separate paths to the two tunable narrow- of implementing antenna structures are by using conducting ma-
band antennas. Part of the required isolation is provided by the terials such as copper traces or beryllium copper stamped ele-
narrow-band antennas and part of it by the tunable filters. The ments mounted on a PC-ABS carrier. Using the same method
4556 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2014
Fig. 2. Inverted F antenna and its equivalent circuit with either tunable inductor
or capacitor.
Fig. 3. Standard antenna in extension of 120 mm long and 55 mm wide PCB
with three different loading concepts, where inductive load is at position (1),
capacitive load is at position (2) and dielectric load is the whole area between
the PCB and the antenna element.
for high- antennas could result in high losses. Therefore, spe-
cial focus needs to be on each of the loss contributors in order
to find new solutions for the high- antennas. The thermal loss
in the radiator itself may be reduced by using better conductors
as silver. The dielectric losses from the antenna carrier can be
reduced by using materials with lower loss tangent at the crit-
ical places of the antenna radiator. The dielectric losses, caused
by the antenna carrier, can even be completely omitted by de-
veloping antenna concepts and manufacturing techniques which
do not need support of the antenna carrier.
Interconnecting high- antenna structures are very chal-
lenging, especially as the thermal loss will be strongly linked
to the method used for interfacing the antenna element and
tuning elements. The interconnection issue may be addressed
by developing techniques with the focus on reducing the loss
in the interconnections.
Tuning and matching components often become the bot-
tleneck when applying them with high- antennas. These
matching and tuning components typically set the limits for
how high- the antennas can be made and still have reasonable
efficiencies.
Maximum rating of the tuning components is another lim-
iting factor that becomes more perceptible due to the high- na-
ture of narrow-band antennas. High AC-voltages across and/or
AC-currents through the tuning elements can cause either non-
linear behavior or detune the tuning components depending on
the tuner technology. Therefore, the tuning components are re-
quired to be able to handle the high AC-voltages and currents
that they are subjected to.
In order to address the design challenges, caused by the an-
tenna , the aim is to design:
• radiator structure that is less sensitive to the high current
density and does not cause unnecessary high current den-
sity that can lead to high thermal loss;
• antenna concept that uses as few matching/tuning compo-
nents as possible;
• for components with inherently higher , e.g., capacitors
instead of inductors;
Fig. 4. Circuit diagrams for each loading principle is shown with the tuning
and matching component values, where the component values without the
values are for lossless components.
• antenna concept with as many matching components as
possible as part of the antenna structure in order to achieve
the highest possible component .
These are the approaches used in developing the antenna design
in this paper.
IV. CAPACITIVE LOADED VERSUS INDUCTIVE
LOADED ANTENNAS
An investigation of inductor loaded versus capacitive loaded
antenna is carried out in order to find out what kind of tuning
component to use for the antenna tuning.
Fig. 2 shows a standard Inverted F antenna, where the tuning
capacitor is placed at the end of the antenna radiator. In this
case the capacitive load forces the antenna into resonance and
then tuning can be achieved by varying the capacitance of .
From the circuit equivalent model it can be seen that it is a par-
allel circuit. The of such a circuit can be expressed as
(1)
Since is directly proportional to , increasing will in-
crease the antenna , resulting in narrower bandwidth. In addi-
tion, the of the antenna itself also increases with decreasing
frequencies. This means that the total antenna would increase
a lot when using capacitive tuning. Another solution is to use
an inductive loading instead to force the antenna in resonance.
From the formula it is seen that increasing leads to decreasing
, since is inverse proportional to inductor. Therefore, in-
ductive loaded antenna is expected to have lower compared
to capacitive loaded antenna.
Fig. 3 illustrates a standard antenna in extension of a PCB
with 3 mm clearance area for the antenna. The PCB has the
total dimensions of 120 55 1 mm and the antenna has the
dimensions 3 10 1 mm . The figure only shows the upper
part of the PCB where the antenna is located. Perfect electrical
conductor (PEC) is used as the material for the PCB and an-
tenna. Three different loading concepts are investigated in order
to see the effect on the antenna and loss. The first one is induc-
tive load (marked as (1) in Fig. 3), the second one is capacitive
load [marked as (2) in the figure] and the third one is dielectric
load, where is increased in order to load the antenna.
The capacitive load and dielectric load are both loading the an-
tenna capacitively, but with the difference that the former is a
discrete capacitor at the open end of the antenna, where the latter
is dielectric material between the antenna element and the PCB
with a certain and . The circuit diagrams for the three
loading concepts are shown in Fig. 4 together with the tuning
and matching component values.
BAHRAMZY et al.: COMPACT AGILE ANTENNA CONCEPT UTILIZING RECONFIGURABLE FRONT END
Fig. 5. -parameters of the three loading concepts at 1.7 GHz and 2 GHz, re-
spectively. Solid line curve corresponds to inductive loaded, long dashed line
to capacitive loaded and dotted line to dielectric loaded antenna.
TABLE I
SIMULATED OF INDUCTIVE, CAPACITIVE AND DIELECTRIC LOADED
ANTENNA FOR LOSSLESS CASE
TABLE II
SIMULATED OF INDUCTIVE, CAPACITIVE AND DIELECTRIC LOADED
ANTENNA FOR LOSSY CASE
Throughout the paper, the antenna is calculated using the
formula [31]
(2)
where is the matched VSWR fractional bandwidth and
s is a specific value of the VSWR.
In Fig. 5 it is seen that the different loading techniques result
in different antenna bandwidths. The difference between induc-
tive loading and capacitive loading is obvious, whereas there
is almost no difference between the capacitive loading and di-
electric loading. The of the inductive loaded versus either
capacitive loaded or dielectric loaded antenna, for lossless and
lossy case, is shown in Tables I and II, respectively. In the lossy
case, besides , the losses are also compared, which consists
of either only component loss or component loss plus substrate
loss ( ). From the Tables it is seen that the of the
antenna, for both cases, is 3.5 to 6.4 times lower for inductive
loaded compared to capacitive loaded antenna, while the losses
are maximum twice as high for the capacitive loaded antenna.
Capacitive loaded antennas are, due to much higher , more
sensitive to component and therefore set even higher require-
ments to the component . In the shown design a capacitor
of 100 and inductor of 80 is used (see Fig. 4).
4557
TABLE III
SIMULATED AND LOSS OF THE ANTENNA WITH THE CAPACITIVE LOAD
PLACED AT THREE DIFFERENT POSITIONS FROM THE ANTENNA FEED
Fig. 6. Change in inductance for different values of .
Next it is investigated if capacitive loaded antenna always has
higher compared to inductive loaded antenna, regardless of
the position of the loading capacitor. Table III presents the
and losses of the capacitive loaded antenna with the capacitive
load placed at three different positions from the antenna feed.
In the Table it is seen that the of the antenna is little dependent
on the position. In fact the antenna increases a little more
when moving towards the feed, due to higher current densi-
ties, making the capacitive loaded antenna even more high- .
Hence, the optimal position in terms of antenna , for the ca-
pacitive loaded antenna, is the open end.
The inductive loaded antenna size can be much smaller to get
the same as the capacitive loaded antenna. In the above men-
tioned case, the inductive loaded antenna clearance area reduces
from 3 mm to 0.6 mm in order to make it comparably high-
to capacitive loaded antenna. This size reduction of antenna
is a huge advantage in small form factors as mobile phones.
Therefore, tunable inductor is an important component in tun-
able antenna designs. However, despite many attempts in man-
ufacturing tunable inductors [32]–[37], there is to date no prac-
tical tunable inductor available for mobile handset applications.
In order to get around this problem, the inductance tuning is
done through the adjustment of the MEMS tunable capacitor.
As shown in Fig. 6, the inductance of the inductor can be varied
by changing the capacitor value connected across it. This is the
method used in this paper to tune the antenna inductively.
V. ANTENNA CONCEPT
The proposed antenna configuration, developed for the STRC
architecture, is depicted in Fig. 7. The antenna comprises two
separate elements; antenna element and coupler. The antenna
element is shorted to ground through a short stub (acting as an
inductor with nH). The resonance frequency
of the antenna element is inductively tuned by connecting a tun-
able capacitor , with a step size of 125 fF, at the connection
point between the antenna element and the ground plane, re-
sulting in a parallel circuit (illustrated in Fig. 8). The feed point
is located at the coupler, which acts as a sniffer that picks up the
electromagnetic energy from the antenna element through the
4558 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2014
Fig. 7. Geometry of the frequency agile on-ground inductive tuned antenna
system.
Fig. 8. Circuit diagram of the antenna system.
small coupling capacitor , and directs them to the feed. In-
stead of direct feed, as in most known antenna concepts (some
examples are given in [38]–[40]), this concept utilizes indirect
feed. The impedance match is obtained through the matching
capacitor . The antenna resonates at highest frequency with
being equal to . The resonance tunes down in frequency
as increases, and resonates at lowest operation frequency for
equal to , leading to electrically longer antenna.
The antenna has the dimensions 10 3 6 mm , without
ground clearance, on a 120 55 1 mm PCB. The antenna is
designed to be as much self-matched as possible, with only two
physical components and . In STRC mode, individual an-
tennas only need to cover half of the duplex (the Tx or Rx half)
for each corresponding band. Therefore, this concept is applied
both as Tx and Rx antenna and covers the Tx and Rx frequency
range of LTE bands I–III, by tuning the resonance, using tun-
able capacitor .
Isolation between the Tx, Rx antenna pair is an essential
metric in STRC architecture, and depends on many factors
such as size of PCB, placement of antenna elements, antenna
topology, user interaction and frequency duplex distance.
Many different techniques are available in the literature for the
decoupling of antennas. Methods in [41]–[44] are hard to tune
in practice, have additional complexities as lossy decoupling
circuits and/or are too ideal for practical implementations.
Technique in [4] looks very promising, but is not mature yet
for practical implementation and requires an additional antenna
element. Studies on isolation, as a function of frequency separa-
tion, are carried out in [5]–[8], where it is shown that the duplex
isolation improves very fast as the antenna bandwidth shrinks.
In this work, high isolation is achieved partly by having duplex
distance and partly by proper placement of the radiators on the
PCB and with respect to each other.
Commercial EM software is used for simulating the antenna,
where the antenna and PCB are made in annealed copper with
Fig. 9. Simulated impedances and -parameters. Reflection coefficients ( ,
) and coupling coefficient ( ) of the Tx, Rx antenna pair tuned in the three
LTE frequency bands (a), matched impedance in the Smith chart (b). The cou-
pling between the Tx, Rx antenna pair is below dB for the whole frequency
range with equal to 140.
a conductivity of S/m, and the PCB substrate is
lossy FR4 with and . The antennas are
matched using commercial circuit simulation software, and the
matched impedances are then combined in the EM simulation
software for obtaining total antenna losses.
A. Simulation Results
The simulated impedances and s-parameters of the Tx and
Rx antennas, separated by the duplex distance, are shown in
Fig. 9. The antennas are tuned in LTE band I–III using the tuning
range pF. The maximum and minimum Tx,
Rx antenna bandwidths are 30–22 MHz and 45–22 MHz, re-
spectively. Both antennas are designed to cover 20 MHz band-
width at the lowest frequencies, which is the maximum channel
bandwidth in LTE. An isolation of better than dB is ob-
tained over the entire frequency range of interest [Fig. 9(a)].
This antenna concept is capable of tuning over relative wide
frequency range using only one tuning capacitor, while keeping
input impedance within acceptable range [see Fig. 9(b)].
Tunable antennas have typically problems with high
AC-voltage across tuning capacitor that often put hard limits on
the power handling level, whereby high power level wireless
systems like GSM900 (33 dBm) and GSM1800 (30 dBm) will
either damage the tunable capacitor and/or affect the tuning of
the antenna, which will result in unwanted power loss. There-
fore, this is taken in to consideration. The peak AC-voltage
across the Tx antenna tuning capacitor , with 30 dBm input
power (GSM systems), is illustrated in Fig. 10. The peak
voltage level increases as tuning down in frequency with the
highest peak voltage being 50 V. These values are expected to
be lower in measurements due to added loss. For lower power
wireless systems as e.g., UMTS, with 24 dBm input power, the
peak voltage levels will be much lower and are therefore not
expected to be an issue.
BAHRAMZY et al.: COMPACT AGILE ANTENNA CONCEPT UTILIZING RECONFIGURABLE FRONT END
Fig. 10. Simulated peak voltage across the Tx antenna tuning capacitor
30 dBm input power.
TABLE IV
SIMULATED FS TOTAL LOSS WITH VARYING TUNING CAPACITOR
Table IV shows the simulated free space (FS) total loss at
three different tuning frequencies of Tx, Rx antennas, each with
two different tuning capacitor values. This in order to in-
vestigate the effect of tuning capacitor on the total antenna
loss. The losses for varies between 2.1 dB and
3.5 dB for Tx antenna and between 1.7 dB and 3.6 dB for Rx
antenna. However, lowering the to 50–70, affects the losses
quite heavily. In fact, the losses are almost doubled at the lowest
frequencies. This demonstrates the importance of high- tuning
components when applied with high- antennas. The change in
losses at highest frequencies, due to difference in , is in-
significant because of lower antenna and the parallel circuit
being away from its resonance frequency.
B. Pros and Cons
In the proposed antenna design the antenna element is shorted
to ground through the small stub, which increases robustness
towards electric static discharge (ESD). The tuning capacitor
is connected in parallel with the small stub and therefore very
less exposed to ESD.
One very essential benefit of coupling capacitor is that
the tuning resolution can be controlled by adjusting its value. In
this way the exact requisite tuning resolution can be achieved
without the need for moving to another position on PCB, as
is the case for tuning conventional antenna concepts [45]–[48].
Furthermore, by having at the open-end of the antenna, the
influence on the natural mode of the antenna is minimized,
4559
Fig. 11. Parallel circuit resonance graph with pF and
nH (a), resonance tuned down in frequency by increasing with 125 fF
step size (b).
with which leads to stable impedance in the Smith chart when tuning
the antenna impedance.
Increasing leads to higher tuning resolution. Therefore,
should be chosen large enough to obtain dB
match tuning resolution at lowest frequencies where the tuning
resolution is coarse. The high tuning resolution, with increasing
, is due to the parallel circuit moving away from its resonance
frequency. For the same antenna size and , when
increasing , the stub inductance needs to decrease in order
to tune antenna up again to the highest frequency of interest,
since affects the antenna resonance frequency despite being
a capacitive probe.
Since of the tuning capacitor is given by the manu-
facturer, the inductor value shall be chosen to be as small as pos-
sible in order to be far from the parallel resonance and thereby
have a decent high component . The TDCA from Wispry [29]
is specified to have pF. Using the formula
, the inductor value at resonance can be calculated to
be nH. The resonance graph is shown in Fig. 11(a),
where (1) is an Operating Point (OP) away from the parallel
resonance, (2) is an OP closer to the resonance and (3) is the
OP closest to the resonance. The closer the OP of the parallel
circuit gets to resonance frequency, the lower its becomes,
leading to higher loss. Therefore, in order to achieve
decent efficiency e.g., OP (1) in Fig. 11(a). As increases, not
only the antenna tunes down in frequency, but also the parallel
circuit resonance [see Fig. 11(b)], resulting in approaching OP
(2) and (3) which causes higher loss due to the reduced . For
pF the circuit resonates with nH and for
pF the circuit resonates with nH. As seen,
the size of the inductor is dependent on of the TDCA.
The lower can become, the larger can be and still op-
erate around OP (1).
VI. PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION OF STRC ARCHITECTURE
WITH TX, RX ANTENNA PAIR
In order to make proof of concept, the STRC architecture
from Fig. 1(b) is built on fabricated PCB. Fig. 12 shows the
PCB and close-up of the Tx and Rx antennas. As illustrated in
Fig. 12(a) the TDCAs and antennas are located on each side
of the PCB. The connection from the antenna to the TDCA is
made through the PCB. The circular cuts on the antenna struc-
ture, shown in Fig. 12(b), are made for proper alignment of the
two separate elements (antenna element and coupler). Antenna
4560 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2014
Fig. 12. (a) Mounted multilayer PCB, (b) close-up of Tx and Rx antennas.
Fig. 13. Antenna side of PCB with mounted Tx, Rx antennas together with
the control interface for the TDCAs (up), close-up of the antenna structure and
TDCA (down).
side of the PCB with the antennas mounted, close-up of the an-
tenna structure and TDCA are presented in Fig. 13. The TDCAs
are provided by Wispry [29]. The TDCA, used for this antenna
concept, has a minimum step size of 125 fF [49] and total ca-
pacitance of pF– pF. The of the
enclosed TDCA is measured to be around 70 at 2 GHz. It has
an IIP3 level larger than dBm and biasing voltage of 3.3 V
[49]. The TDCA is able to handle RMS RF voltage of up to 40
V, corresponding to peak voltage close to 57 V, which is suffi-
cient for the proposed antenna concept (see Fig. 10). The TDCA
is controlled through serial peripheral interface (SPI) line com-
mands, see Fig. 13(a).
A. Measurement Results
The impedance measurement is shown in Fig. 14, where it is
seen that the entire Tx, Rx frequency range of interest is cov-
ered. The worst case isolation is dB. Comparing Smith
Fig. 14. Measured antenna impedances and -parameters. (a) , and
of Tx, Rx antennas; (b) matched impedance in the Smith chart. The coupling
between the Tx, Rx antenna pair is better than dB for the entire frequency
spectrum.
Fig. 15. Measured radiation patterns ( , and plane cuts). (a) Tx
antenna at 1975 MHz; (b) Rx antenna at 2165 MHz.
chart of Fig. 14 with Fig. 9, it is noticed that the impedance
match curve variation is larger in measurements, which is be-
cause of more loss. Note, the parallel circuit resonance of the
Tx antenna becomes visible in the shown frequency spectrum,
as tuning down in frequency.
The radiation properties of the antennas are depicted in
Fig. 15, where omnidirectional characteristics are observed for
both antennas. The measured total efficiencies and losses of
antennas are presented in Fig. 16. The measurements are carried
out at the lowest and highest frequencies, respectively. For both
antennas, the efficiency drops dramatically as tuning down in
frequency. The figure shows that thermal loss is clearly the
dominant factor. The measured losses at lowest frequencies are
around 3 dB higher compared to simulations ( ). This
BAHRAMZY et al.: COMPACT AGILE ANTENNA CONCEPT UTILIZING RECONFIGURABLE FRONT END 4561

Fig. 16. Measured FS efficiency and loss (divided into reflection and thermal
loss) of Tx and Rx antennas at lowest and highest frequencies, respectively.

Fig. 18. (a) Stub removed on the antenna side, (b) the stub directly connected
to the TDCA on the bottom layer, (c) improved layout, and (d) equivalent circuit
of the improved layout.

TABLE V
MEASURED TOTAL LOSS AFTER LAYOUT IMPROVEMENT

Fig. 17. Fraction of the multilayer PCB showing only top and bottom layers
with the layout design for the integration of antenna, (a) TDCA and stub,
(b) equivalent circuit of the layout.

can be explained by looking at differences between simulations

and measurements.
In simulations is estimated to be 0.75 pF, esti- are connected to ground at the same point. Table V shows the
mated to be between 50–70 and the stub and are connected performance of the improved antennas, where it is seen that the
directly together and to the antenna, which is not possible in total losses of the Tx and Rx antennas, at the lowest frequencies,
practice. Fig. 17(a) shows a fraction of the PCB, where the are now 6.7 dB and 6.4 dB, respectively. As expected there is
layout for the antenna, and the stub is illustrated. Fig. 17(b) no difference in the efficiency results at the highest frequencies.
illustrates the circuit model of the layout. From the figure, it is The improved measured losses are quite close to the simulated
clearly seen that the and the stub are not connected ideally ones, which indicate that the difference was mainly due to the
as in simulations. The layout illustration shows that the current layout design.
path from the back to the stub is long, going through all the
VII. CONCLUSION
PCB layers (from the component layer up to the antenna layer)
and around the slot in the antenna layer, before reaching the stub. This paper introduces an antenna concept for the STRC ar-
This long current path results in loss and inductance . As chitecture, where individual radiators cover half of the duplex
depicted in Fig. 17(b), the reactive energy oscillates back and for each corresponding frequency band, the transmitting and re-
forth between the stub and in series with three different in- ceiving half, respectively. The antennas are able to cover the fre-
ductors. The high current density there causes more loss due to quency range of 1710–2170 MHz, and provide Tx-Rx filtering
the Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR) of the extra inductors in of more than 25 dB across the entire frequency range. The an-
the layout. The energy is desired to oscillate only between the tenna exhibits robustness towards ESD because the antenna el-
stub and in order to avoid the high current densities through ement is shorted to ground through a very small stub.
and ( is the parasitic inductance of the ). It is noticed that proper layout design becomes more crucial
when integrating high- antennas with RF components. Effi-
B. Antenna Layout Improvement ciency improvement of more than 2 dB is seen by improving
The easiest and cheapest way to improve the layout, without the antenna layout.
manufacturing new PCB, is to move the stub to the bottom layer
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BAHRAMZY et al.: COMPACT AGILE ANTENNA CONCEPT UTILIZING RECONFIGURABLE FRONT END
Pevand Bahramzy was born in 1981. He received
the B.Sc.E.E. and the M.Sc.E.E degrees in electrical
engineering from the Danish Technical University
(DTU), Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2006 and 2008,
respectively. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree in cooperation with Aalborg University,
Denmark.
In 2008, he joined the Molex Antenna Business
Unit where he worked with the design of integrated
antennas for mobile devices. He is now with Intel
Mobile Communication, Denmark. His current
research is focused on reconfigurable high- antennas for portable devices.
His areas of interests are small integrated mobile antennas and tunable high-
antennas.
Ole Jagielski was born in 1963. He received the
B.Sc.E.E. and M.Sc.E.E. degrees from Aalborg Uni-
versity, Denmark, in 1988 and 1993, respectively.
Throughout the years, he has been working within
R&D with a focus on RF front-ends and EMC and
antenna development. The employments have been
at Aalborg University, Dancall/Amstrad, Bosch,
Siemens, BenQ, Motorola, Molex, and now Intel
Mobile Communications. He was one of the pioneers
in establishing over-the-air measurement systems.
He has been working with the development of the
first internal triple-band antenna in 1998 with low SAR and high TRP and TIS.
Later, he participated in the development of several different antenna concepts
for mobile communication.
4563
Simon Svendsen received the M.Sc.E.E. degree in telecommunication from
Aalborg University, Denmark, in 1995.
He joined Bang and Olufsen in 1996, where he worked with RF and antenna
design for DECT phones. In 2000, he joined Maxon as an antenna designer for
cellular mobile phones. He has worked as an antenna designer and mechanical
engineering since then for companies like Siemens Mobile Phones, Motorola,
and Molex. His current position is as a senior antenna designer at Intel Mobile
Communications.
Gert Frølund Pedersen was born in 1965. He
received the B.Sc.E.E. degree (with honors) in elec-
trical engineering from the College of Technology,
Dublin, Ireland, and the M.Sc.E.E. and Ph.D. de-
grees from Aalborg University, Denmark, in 1993
and 2003, respectively.
He has been with Aalborg University, Denmark,
since 1993, where he is now a Full Professor heading
the Antenna, Propagation, and Networking Group
and is also the Head of the Doctoral School on
Wireless, in which some 100 Ph.D. students are
enrolled. His research has focused on radio communications for mobile termi-
nals, especially small antennas, diversity systems, propagation and biological
effects, and he has published more than 75 peer reviewed papers and holds
20 patents. He has also worked as a consultant for the development of more
than 100 antennas for mobile terminals, including the first internal antenna for
mobile phones in 1994 with lowest SAR; first internal triple-band antenna in
1998 with low SAR and high TRP and TIS; and recently, various multi-antenna
systems rated as the most efficient on the market. He has been one of the
pioneers in establishing over-the-air measurement systems. The measurement
technique is now well established for mobile terminals with single antennas
and he was chairing the COST2100 SWG2.2 group with liaison to 3GPP for
over-the-air test of MIMO terminals.