Reconfigurable Multiband Antenna Designs for Wireless Communication Devices

Abstract

New designs for compact reconfigurable antennas are introduced for mobile communication devices. The uniqueness of the antenna designs are that they allow various groups of their operating frequency bands to be selected electronically. In particular, each group of frequency bands, or mode, can be made to serve several different communication systems simultaneously. These systems may include various combinations of GSM, DCS, PCS, UMTS, Bluetooth, and wireless local-area network (LAN). Therefore, by electronically selecting different antenna modes, a variety of communication systems can be conveniently served by only one antenna. One advantage is that through the different operational modes, the total antenna volume can be reused, and therefore the overall antenna can be made compact. In these designs, the selection of the different modes is achieved by either i) switching different feeding locations of the antenna (switched feed) or ii) switching or breaking of the antenna's connection to the ground (switched ground). This paper demonstrates these two designs. For the first design of switched feed, it can support GSM, DCS, PCS, and UMTS. In the second design, the antenna makes use of a switched-ground technique, which can cover GSM, DCS, PCS, UMTS, Bluetooth, and 2.4 GHz wireless LAN. The designs are investigated when ideal switches and also various realistic active switches based on PIN diodes, GaAs field effect transistor, and MEMs configurations. The designs are verified through both numerical simulations and measurement of an experimental prototype. The results confirm good performance of the two multiband reconfigurable antenna designs.