J.-H. Lee and J.-G.

Yook: Improvement of Radiation Performance of Mobile Phone Antenna Using Parasitic Element

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Improvement of Radiation Performance of Mobile Phone Antenna Using Parasitic Element

Jeong-Ho Lee, Member, IEEE, Jong-Gwan Yook, Member, IEEE
Abstract In this paper, we propose a method of using a parasitic element to improve the radio frequency performance of PIFA (Planar Inverted F Antenna) which is built in mobile phone for EGSM, DCS, PCS, and WCDMA bands. The proposed methodology based on external parasitic element in the handset case is validated for extremely thin mobile phone model, which has limited space for any additional parasitic element inside antenna design space. The proposed parasitic element exhibits TRP (Total Radiated Power) and TIS (Total Isotropic Sensitivity) improvement of 0.4 dB to1.1 dB and 0.2 dB to 0.6 dB, respectively, under the free space measurement condition, while 0.6 dB to 0.7 dB and 0.4 dB to 1.1 dB for the hand phantom environment1. Index Terms Parasitic element, Mobile phone, PIFA, TRP, TIS I. INTRODUCTION Recently, portable mobile communication devices become extremely miniaturized as well as multi-functional to support various user necessities, such as multi-band multi-standard for global roaming service, so that various antennas mounted in those devices need to be housed in limited space without performance degradation. It is well known that antenna gain and radiation efficiency are in general proportional to the size of the antenna, and as a result the internal antenna designed to have multi-band properties in limited internal space has low radiation resistance and narrow bandwidth characteristics [1], [2]. Therefore, in order to overcome these problems, various research and development on novel structures and materials for antennas have been actively pursued, and various techniques to compensate performances of existing antenna structure have been also studied [3]-[6]. The subject of this paper is the development of a method to design parasitic element to widen the bandwidth of antennas and improve the radiation efficiency. The parasitic element is designed on battery cover near the antenna to operate at high frequency bands (1 to 2 GHz regime) to have quadruple band property (EGSM, DCS, PCS, and WCDMA band) and the characteristics have been confirmed with realistic mobile phone handset model. Since over-the-air RF performance of a given mobile phone can be measured with TRP (total radiated power) and TIS (total isotropic sensitivity) parameters, main effort has been exerted to simultaneously improve both parameters in multiple frequency bands which is quite challenging task. In the following sections various parametric studies are documented.
1 Jeong-Ho Lee is with the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea(e-mail: jlee0@yonsei.ac.kr). Jong-Gwan Yook is with the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea(e-mail: jgyook@yonsei.ac.kr).

II. DESIGN STRATEGY OF PARASITIC ELEMENT Fig. 1 shows the schematic view of the mobile phone handset zoomed in to the internal antenna used in this research as well as the structure of the proposed parasitic element. The type of internal antenna can be considered as a PIFA, and it is located at the bottom of the handset. The antenna is designed to operate EGSM (880~960 MHz), DCS (1710~1880 MHz), PCS (1850~1990 MHz), and WCDMA (1920~2170 MHz) for global roaming service. In addition, it should be noted that the structure of the handset used in this work is bar type having the battery cover outside rear case, and the parasitic element is designed to operate at upper frequency band and printed on the inside surface of the battery cover. Designing a parasitic element in a mobile phone handset generally utilizes a method to arrange the antenna and parasitic element together on dielectric material [7]-[10]. However, the mobile phone handset used in this research has very limited volume for internal antenna as well as parasitic element. Hence the parasitic radiating element has been separately designed and optimized, and placed at unconventional place as mentioned above. This approach has advantageous since the primary antenna is designed in advance and the parasitic element can provide additional performance improvement and be removed without degrading the overall system characteristics. In order to effectively implement the characteristics of the parasitic element to be operated through electromagnetic coupling from the primary antenna embedded in the handset, the location and the shape of the parasitic element are critical factors. It would be desirable that the parasitic element has simple topology, while maintaining improved radiation performance in the desired frequency bands. Inappropriate placement and geometry of the parasitic element could cause changes in the resonance characteristics of existing internal antenna, and result in the degraded radiation efficiency. The design and optimization of the parasitic elements have been carried out with three dimensional full wave electro-magnetic solvers. Fig. 2 shows the current distribution on the parasitic element as well as on the primary antenna at 1.8 GHz. It should be noted that the length of the parasitic element is close to 0.25 at 0.9 GHz band, while it is almost 0.5 long at 1.8 GHz which is excited by the longest current path of the primary antenna topology. Thus, the parasitic element needs to be placed above the point where the highest current density is formed at 1.8 GHz band on the longest current path of the primary

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IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, No. 4, November 2010

antenna, resulting maximum field coupling from the antenna to the parasitic element. It is found that the resonance characteristics and the radiation efficiency are severely impacted if the parasitic element is placed at the terminal of the primary antenna, thus it is much more effective to place the parasitic element in the middle of the antenna. With this approach the characteristics of the primary antenna are least affected by the ad hoc parasitic radiating element and independent design process would be possible for optimum parasitic element.

Fig. 2. Surface current vectors at 1.8 GHz

III. PARAMETRIC STUDY A. The length of the parasitic elements For optimization of the parasitic element real mobile phone handset has been designed and manufactured, and its radiation characteristics are studied along the TRP and TIS parameters for various length and width of the parasitic element, as well as the gap between the parasitic element and the primary antenna. It should be noted that the parasitic element is patterned with conductive paint on inside of the battery cover. First of all, the characteristics of the antenna has been measured as a function of the length of the parasitic element ranging from 22 to 17 mm and each corresponds to 0.125 for 1.71 and 2.17 GHz. Then, the effects of the width of the parasitic element are studied. Fig. 3 shows the return loss of the antenna with three different length ( ) of the parasitic element in high frequency band. From the figure it is clear that the resonance frequency remains almost unchanged for various lengths of the parasitic element, while the return loss reveals slight shift depending on the length. In this work it has been found optimum that the length of the parasitic element needs to be in the range between 20 to 22 mm.

(a)

(b)

(c) Fig. 1. Configuration of the proposed PIFA and parasitic element: (a) Perspective view of the antenna and parasitic element, (b) Cross-sectional view showing the vertical position of antenna and parasitic element, (c) Top and side view of the antenna structure

Fig. 3. Variation of S11 with respect to the length ( ) of parasitic element

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In addition, the effect of the width of the parasitic element on the antenna performance has been investigated. The width of the parasitic elements has been varied from 2 mm to 4 mm while the length of the elements is fixed as 20 mm. It is found out that the return loss characteristics remain almost constant for the test cases regardless of the width of the parasitic element. B. Effects of the horizontal offset In addition, the sensitivity of the frequency response of the antenna due to the gap between the parasitic element and the antenna has been thoroughly studied. Since the parasitic element is electromagnetically coupled from the antenna, the gap dimension would be the key parameter to define the coupling amount and mutual influence. The goal of the designing process has been on the determination of the optimum parasitic pattern including the gap dimension a posteriori after antenna is initially designed. Thus weak coupling between the antenna and parasitic element is desirable. Since this research utilizes parasitic element printed on the inside of the battery cover of mobile phone handset, the lateral gap separation, x, between the parasitic element and the antenna pattern and the longitudinal offset dimension, y, are considered for optimization (See Fig. 1), while the vertical distance, z, between the parasitic element and the antenna pattern has been fixed due to the form factor limitation of the commercially reasonable mobile phone. Fig. 4 summarizes the measured fractional bandwidth as a function of the lateral gap dimension, x, between the parasitic element and the antenna pattern for three major communication frequency bands. It is clear that as the gap x increases (thus weak coupling) the fractional bandwidths are decreasing, except for the EGSM band. On the other hand, when the gap x becomes negative (overlapped topology) the electromagnetic coupling between the antenna and the parasitic element becomes so strong that the original antenna characteristics have been altered significantly. Note that even for positive values of the lateral gap dimension x there are shift in resonant frequencies to lower frequency region as the gap x becomes less than 2 mm due to non-negligible mutual inductance, so in this work 2 mm has been chosen for optimum value. Of course, the increased mutual inductance can be compensated by adjusting the shape of the antenna as well as the parasitic element, however, it would significantly change the antenna performance in other bands and this might not desirable optimization procedure. In addition, the longitudinal offset y has been found quite influential to the proper excitation of the parasitic element and various possible values are fabricated and tested. When y is less than a certain value, the parasitic element is weakly excited and the overall performance improvement is not expected. With several test structures it is found that the longitudinal offset y of 7 mm reveals the best performance considering the original antenna geometry as well as the required characteristics. Needless to say, the optimum values of the x and y depend on various parameters, such as the antenna topology, material constant,

the required frequency band, as well as desirable radiation patterns, to name a few. The optimization methodology exerted in this work could provide valuable design guidelines for parasitic element placement and resulting improved radiation performances.

Fig. 4. Variation of bandwidth with respect to the gap(x) between parasitic element and antenna pattern

C. The TRP and TIS performances Table I summarizes the geometrical parameters of the parasitic element and its mounting location optimized in this work. Fig. 5 shows the resulting measured return loss characteristics for the original antenna without parasitic element as well as the case with the parasitic element, revealing the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The return loss and bandwidth for DCS, PCS, and WCDMA bands have been improved with the parasitic element. On the other hand, for EGSM band the bandwidth as well as the resonant characteristics remains almost unchanged. Fig. 6 shows the measured radiation patterns for H- and Eplane in the upper frequency bands, confirming the omnidirectional characteristics in all operating frequency bands which would be required for mobile communication handset.

Fig. 5. Variation of S11 by the parasitic element

2414 TABLE I GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS OF THE PROPOSED PARASITIC ELEMENT Parameter Length ( ) Width (w) Lateral gap distance (x) Longitudinal offset (y) Vertical distance (z) Size (mm) 20.0 2.0 2.0 7.0 1.7

IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, No. 4, November 2010

TIS

2 NM
N 1M 1

[EIS ( i , j ) EIS ( i , j )]sin( i )

j 1 j 0

(2)

where N and M are 6 and 12, respectively. The EIS represents the effective isotropic sensitivity, and PS is the conducted sensitivity of the antenna system, while the EIRP is the effective isotropic radiated power. The TRP and TIS are the two most important RF performance metric of a given mobile handset and only a few dB of the value would be a critical performance criterion. It should be noted that improving the both parameters simultaneously in multiple frequency bands even a dB is a challenging task. In general mobile phone handset must satisfy a fixed standards for very strict radiation performance to be used as commercial products, and TRP and TIS are used as typical indexes to represent the radiation performance of a mobile phone handset. The radiation performances are confirmed according to standard measurement methods as defined by CTIA (Cellular Telecommunication & Internet Association) [11]. The hand phantom used in this research is IXB-090R which is manufactured by Indexsar. Its material constants are defined as: r = 300.1, = 0.350.03 at 0.835 GHz, and r = 27.52.3, = 0.70.20 at 1.9 GHz.
TABLE FREE SPACE TRP AND TIS OF THE PIFA HAVING PARASITIC ELEMENT.. w/o parasitic element with parasitic element Band TRP(dBm) TIS(dBm) TRP(dBm) TIS(dBm) EGSM DCS PCS WCDMA 28.3 24.2 25.6 20.1 -103.2 -104.9 -105.0 -108.0 28.2 25.3 26.3 20.5 -103.1 -105.5 -105.6 -108.2

(a)

TABLE TRP AND TIS OF THE PIFA HAVING PARASITIC ELEMENT WITH HAND PHANTOM.. w/o parasitic element with parasitic element Band TRP(dBm) TIS(dBm) TRP(dBm) TIS(dBm) (b) Fig. 6. Radiation patterns at DCS, PCS, WCDMA band: (a) H-plane, (b) E-plane EGSM DCS PCS WCDMA 22.3 21.5 22.2 16.5 -98.3 -101.5 -100.6 -104.2 22.1 22.1 22.8 17.2 -98.2 -101.9 -101.7 -104.9

Table and summarize measured TRP and TIS values in free space as well as with the hand phantom situation. As defined below the TRP represents total integrated radiated power from a given mobile phone handset and used as a measure of how effectively a given antenna system radiates, while the TIS describes how well a given device captures weak incoming signals and smaller value means better sensitivity. The TRP and TIS are given by Equations (1) and (2).
N 1M 1

TRP

2 NM

[ EiRP ( i ,
j 1 j 0

) EiRP ( i ,

)]sin( i )

(1)

where N and M are 12 and 24, respectively.

From the radiation performance measurement it is clear that due to the placement of the parasitic element, the TRP and TIS in the DCS band is improved by 1.1 dB and 0.6 dB, respectively, for free space case, while those are enhanced by 0.7 dB and 0.6 dB, respectively, at PCS frequency band. In addition, in the case of mounting with the hand phantom, the TRP and TIS at DCS band are improved by 0.6 dB and 0.4 dB, respectively, and those at PCS band are increased by 0.6 dB and 1.1 dB, respectively. The TRP and TIS at WCDMA band are also improved by 0.7 dB. These measurement results are summarized in Fig. 7. Note that the slight performance degradation in the EGSM band can be considered as an

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negligible values due to measurement uncertainty. In all other frequency band, significant improvement in the radiation performance has been achieved.

REFERENCES
Kin-Lu Wong, Planar Antennas for Wireless Communications, John Wiley & Sons, 2003. [2] K. Fujimoto, A. Henderson, K. Hirasawa, and J. R. Janmes, Small Antennas, Research Studies Press Ltd., London and John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York, 1987. [3] Soon Ho Hwang, Tae Sik Yang, Joon Ho Byun, Kim, A. S., "Design and analysis of metamaterial antenna for mobile handset application", 3rd European Conference. Antennas and Propag.(EuCAP 2009), vol. 52, pp 3563-3566, Mar. 2009. [4] Jen-Yea Jan, Liang-Chih Tseng, "Small planar monopole antenna with a shorted parasitic inverted-L wire for wireless communications in the 2.4-, 5.2-, and 5.8-GHz bands", IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation, vol. 52, pp 1903-1905, Jul. 2004 [5] Sato, K., Amano, T., "Improvements of impedance and radiation performances with a parasitic element for mobile phone", IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium. (AP-S 2008), pp. 1-4, Jul. 2008. [6] Huang, C.-Y., Chiu, P.-Y., "Dual-band monopole antenna with shorted parasitic element", Electronics Letters, vol 41, pp 1154-1155, Oct. 2005. [7] Kimura, Y., Ebine, Y., Cho, K., "Characteristics of a dual-feed dipole antenna with parasitic elements", Asia-Pacific Conference Proceedings, vol 3, pp 3, Dec. 2005. [8] Nakano, H., Suzuki, R., Yamauchi, J. "Low- profile inverted-F antenna with parasitic elements on an infinite ground plane", IEE Proc.-Microw. Antennas Propag., vol. 145, No. 4, pp. 321-325, Aug. 1998. [9] Young Jun Cho, Soon Ho Hwang, Seong Ook Park, "A dual-band internal antenna with a parasitic patch for mobile handsets and the consideration of the Hand set case and battery", IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, vol. 4, pp 429-432, 2005. [10] Dong-Uk Sim, Seong-Ook Park, "A triple-band internal antenna design and performance in presence of the handset case, battery, and human head", IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility, vol 47, pp 658-666, Aug. 2005 [11] CTIA Certification Test Plan for Mobile Station Over the Air Performance, Method of Measurement for Radiated RF Power and Receiver Performance, Rev. 3.0 (2008). [1] BIOGRAPHIES Jeong-Ho Lee received BS and MS degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from the Dong-A University, Pusan, Korea, in 1987, and 1989, respectively. He joined LG Electronics in 1995 and is currently with the Mobile Handset R&D Center. He is currently working toward the Ph. D. degree at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. His research interests are in the field of antenna design and RF design of Mobile phone.

(a)

(b) Fig. 7. TRP and TIS improvements: (a) under free space condition, (b) under hand phantom

IV. CONCLUSION

In this paper, the shape and location of the parasitic element have been optimized for the improvement of radiation performance (TRP and TIS) at multiple frequency bands with extremely small form factor mobile phone. The underlining idea of employing parasitic element is that the primary antenna is designed a priori and remained unaltered, while the parasitic element is optimized for the TRP and TIS improvement in designated frequency bands. The lateral as well as longitudinal offsets of the parasitic element from the primary PIFA have been optimized and significant improvement has been obtained in terms of TRP and TIS in upper operating frequency bands (DCS, PCS, and WCDMA). It should be noted that the TRP and TIS are over-the-air characteristics indicating the performance of any realistic antenna systems and reasonable improvement of these parameters are challenging task for multiband application with stringent antenna form factor requirement.

Jong-Gwan Yook received his B.S., M.S degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 1987 and 1989, respectively, and Ph. D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from University of Michigan, Michigan, 1998. From 1999 to 2000, he joined Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology as a professor. In March 2000, he joined the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Yonsei University and is currently a professor. His research interests include Microwave System Analysis and Design, Computational Electromagnetics, RF MEMS, Bio-Radar and Sensors, EMI/EMC and Antenna system.