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A dual-polarized wideband omnidirectional ceiling antenna with low gain variations (GVs) for 2G/3G/LTE/5G sub-6 GHz indoor applications is presented. The vertical-polarized (VP) antenna element that is arranged in the center is composed of a pair of orthogonal semicircular plates and a top-loaded circular brass disk, whereas the horizontal-polarized (HP) antenna element is comprised of four printed dipoles with truncated corners, four arc-shaped parasitic patches around the dipoles, and a 1-to-4 power divider feeding network on the bottom. The feeding network with the “hook”-shaped stubs cooperates with the slot between the adjacent printed dipoles to improve the isolation between the VP and HP antenna elements. Furthermore, the top-loaded circular brass disk, the four arc-shaped parasitic patches, and two pairs of extended strips printed along the ±45° direction are used to reduce the GVs but broaden the operating bandwidths. Experimental results demonstrate that a wide overlapped frequency bandwidth of 74.9% (1.66–3.65 GHz) with an excellent port isolation (≥40 dB) is achieved for the aforesaid application scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A low-profile differentially fed dual-polarized antenna with high gain and isolation is proposed for fifth-generation (5G) microcell communications. By introducing two pairs of symmetrical meandering conductors to connect both ends of the radiating cross slots, a compact-size antenna with wide bandwidth can be achieved. By further adopting an artificial magnetic conductor-backed (AMC) reflector that is arranged below the radiating patches with a distance of 6 mm, the antenna profile can be reduced from $0.25\lambda _{c}$ to $0.13\lambda _{c}$ (where $\lambda _{c}$ is the free-space wavelength at the center frequency), while both the gain and frequency bandwidth are also enhanced. Furthermore, owing to the orthogonal differentially fed structure, the antenna element displays a high port isolation of 37 dB. Finally, by meticulously designing the feeding network, much narrower beamwidth can be yielded, and hence, the unidirectional gain is further improved. The measured results show that a lower-frequency bandwidth of 13.5% (3.26–3.73 GHz) with a gain of 15.7 ± 0.1 dBi and upper-frequency bandwidth of 7.6% (4.68–5.05 GHz) with 15.55 ± 0.05 dBi gain can be obtained by the proposed antenna array. In addition, port isolation better than 28 dB and stable radiation patterns can be achieved. With the aforementioned characteristics, the proposed antenna is a good candidate for future 5G microcell communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a compact building block composed of a slot antenna and a loop antenna is proposed. The slot antenna and the loop antenna share a rectangular clearance, which improves the compactness of the building block effectively. Although the slot and the loop have overlapped completely, the proposed building block exhibits good isolation (better than 19 dB) without any external decoupling structure. Four such building blocks are used to implement a compact eight-port multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) array operating at 3.5 GHz band (3.4–3.6 GHz) for fifth-generation (5G) metal-rimmed smartphone applications. The proposed eight-antenna MIMO array exhibits good isolation of better than 16 dB across the whole operating band. The measured efficiencies of the proposed MIMO array were between 59% and 73%, and its corresponding measured envelope correlation coefficients (ECCs) were better than 0.05. Furthermore, the calculated channel capacity of the proposed MIMO array with 20 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was about 38.2–39.8 bps/Hz across the desired bands (3.4–3.6 GHz). The measured results confirm that the proposed MIMO array is a good candidate for 5G terminals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dual-band dual-polarized stacked microstrip antenna with high-isolation and band-notch characteristics is proposed. The proposed antenna is comprised of three layers of substrate. To obtain high isolation between two input ports, a pair of orthogonal differentially driven feeding lines are printed on the top side of the bottom layer. To yield the desired lower- and upper-frequency bandwidths for 5G microcell communications, two sets of $2\times 2$ radiating patch arrays are printed on the second and top layer substrates, respectively. Compared with the conventional microstrip antenna, besides demonstrating a smaller size of $0.48\times 0.48\times 0.085\,\,\lambda _{0}^{3}$ , the proposed antenna has also exhibited higher isolation of better than 40 dB and higher gain of >8 dBi. Finally, a novel technique of arranging four meander lines that connects the four array elements printed on the second layer substrate is proposed to achieve an adjustable band-notch characteristic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A useful method to transform the smartphone metal cover into an antenna booster for near-field communication (NFC) antenna installed in a full metal cover (FMC) smartphone is proposed. In this proposed work, by properly embedding a series capacitor into a meticulously selected location within the metal cover, strong coupling between the NFC antenna coil and the metal cover will be generated, which mitigates the reverse eddy current induced on the metal cover. Because of that, the performance of the NFC antenna (located below a narrow horizontal slot-loaded metal cover) is substantially improved, as compared to a reference stand-alone NFC antenna in free-space conditions. To verify this proposed methodology, an ordinary single-turn coil reference NFC antenna 1 (ref 1) and a 3-turn coil reference NFC antenna 2 (ref 2) are initially designed via simulation, followed by the conducting of several typical experiments on these two reference antennas. Finally, the two reference prototype NFC antennas that have utilized this method for a single horizontal slot-loaded FMC are also certified by the Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMV) test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, multiband antennas based on a single ring slot are proposed for 4G/5G smartphone applications. The basic structure of the antenna is consisted of a large metal ground and an unbroken metal rim, in which a single 2 mm-wide ring slots is realized between the metal ground and rim. Here, a reconfigurable 4G antenna (820–960 and 1710–2690 MHz) is initially devised by loading multiple grounded stubs and a simple dc controlling circuit with varactor diode into the upper section of the ring slot. To further cover the sub-6 GHz spectrum (3400–3600 MHz) for future 5G communications, a four-element multi-input multi-output (MIMO) slot antennas configuration is designed by utilizing the lower section of the ring slot. A prototype antenna was fabricated, and good agreement is shown between the measured and simulated results. Due to the advantages such as multiband operation, MIMO configuration for 5G communications, high isolation, and compact structure, the proposed antenna design is attractive for 4G/5G smartphones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel decoupling method without adding any decoupling structure is investigated, and it is able to apply to multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna designs with dual and multiple elements. The decoupling mechanism applied in here is to change the electrical length of the radiators to manipulate the radiation pattern for obtaining pattern diversity and good isolation simultaneously. The design mechanism and procedures for realizing pattern diversity are presented. To validate the proposed method, a two-element monopole antenna array with inverted-L elements is initially studied with the isolation better than 20 dB. Next, a four-element MIMO antenna utilizing two different types of monopole elements is proposed to further verify the feasibility of the proposed decoupling method. Finally, an eight-element MIMO antenna operating at 3.5 GHz is implemented with a compact total size of $40\times 100$ mm2, and the measured isolations between two elements are better than 15 dB. Envelope correlation coefficient and channel capacity are calculated to evaluate the MIMO performance, and good results are obtained. The target application of the proposed design is for laptop, small cell base station, or WiFi box with multiple elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple internal antenna design for wireless wide-area network/long-term evolution (LTE) operations is investigated, and it can be incorporated into a mobile phone that has an unbroken metal rim of height 5 mm. The proposed antenna is mainly composed of two parallel slots (dual loop) embedded on the system ground, and by feeding them with an L-shaped coupled feedline with matching networks, good excitation of multiple loop resonant modes can be obtained, which is capable of covering the GSM850/900 (824–960 MHz), DCS/PCS/UMTS2100, and LTE2300/2500 (1710–2690 MHz) operating bands. In addition, the feasibility of realizing decoupled multiantennas ( $2 \times 2$ multi-in multi-out antenna system) is also demonstrated, and its performances are acceptable for smartphone applications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A near-field communication (NFC) dual-loop antenna with a miniaturized size of 15\,\, \text mm \times 25 \,\,\text mm is initially proposed for full metal-cover smartphone applications. To achieve a small clearance zone on the metal cover, a small rectangular slot of size 8 \,\,\text mm \times 16\,\, \text mm is loaded into the metal cover. To allow good inductive coupling, the NFC antenna is only 0.37 mm beneath the center of the rectangular slot. Because of that, the direction of the eddy current induced on the metal cover will be the same as the dual-loop NFC antenna. It is noteworthy that the prototype NFC antenna integrated with a single rectangular slot loaded full metal cover was certified by the Europay, MasterCard, and Visa test. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The design of a novel practical 28 GHz beam steering phased array antenna for future fifth generation mobile device applications is presented in this communication. The proposed array antenna has 16 cavity-backed slot antenna elements that are implemented via the metallic back casing of the mobile device, in which two eight-element phased arrays are built on the left- and right-side edges of the mobile device. Each eight-element phased array can yield beam steering at broadside and gain of >15 dBi can be achieved at boresight. The measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth of the proposed cavity-backed slot antenna element was approximately 27.5–30 GHz. In addition, the impacts of user’s hand effects are also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waveguide structures are criticized for their bulky geometry and heavy weight in practical applications. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the weight-reduction technique of the waveguide structures, while maintaining their electrical properties and mechanical fabricability. In this paper, a waveguide perforation technique for lightweight purpose is proposed, and an X-band pyramidal horn antenna that employs this technique is developed and tested. To ease the manufacturing process of the 3-D thin-wall structure, a 3-D metal-direct-printing technology is utilized to fabricate the perforated horn. Meanwhile, a full-metal horn without any perforation and a horn printed in dielectric material but coated with metal are also included to compare with the proposed one. Experimental results show that around two-thirds of the total weight can be reduced. Other measured results in terms of electrical performance are in excellent agreement with the full-metal ones, validating the feasibility of the design and fabrication approach. The novelty of this paper realized by the 3-D printing technique is a promising strategy to inspire lightweight structure designs for radio frequency applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A single open-slot antenna for long term evolution (LTE)/ wireless wide area network (WWAN) operation is proposed for smartphone applications. To achieve dual-band operation, the narrow open-slot is fed by a simple 50- $\Omega$ vertical feedline with two horizontally protruded feeding structures. To further attain good impedance matching for these two operating bands, an L-shaped metallic plate is used. From the measured results, good antenna efficiencies of more than 40% are demonstrated across the LTE/WWAN operation in the 698–960 MHz and 1710–2690 MHz bands. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A novel cavity-backed slot antenna, with the ability of reconfiguring the frequency, polarization, and radiation pattern, is presented. The reconfigurability is realized by electronically controlling the state of switches between two crossed slots etched on the surfaces of a substrate integrated waveguide cavity. The antenna is capable of simultaneously changing the radiation patterns between forward and backward directions, switching the polarization among two orthogonal linearly polarized (LP) and two orthogonal circularly polarized (CP) states, tuning between three frequency bands for LP states and between two frequency bands for CP states. A fully functional prototype is developed and tested, demonstrating the antenna with measured gains of approximately 4 dBi and stable unidirectional radiation patterns for all 20 states. In addition, the proposed design possesses a low profile of 0.01 free-space wavelength. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A wideband antenna with ±45° dual polarization is proposed. The antenna is mainly comprised of four printed trapezoidal metal walls standing on a ground plane that forms a 3-D open square aperture cavity structure with tapered cut on the four wall edges. The metal walls are fed by two orthogonally positioned (±45°) feeding networks, forming two pairs of dipole arms. Because of the excited magnetic-electric resonances, wide bandwidth can be achieved. The proposed antenna is fabricated, and the measured results show that it has an impedance bandwidth of 56% (1.62–2.87 GHz) for VSWR < 1.5. In addition, isolation of larger than 30 dB is also exhibited across the bandwidth between the two feeding ports. Because the proposed antenna has a hollow inside structure, it is a good candidate for multiband sharing aperture antenna element. Furthermore, it has a simplified fabrication process and is suitable for outdoor base station antennas that require VSWR < 1.5. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A $6 \times 6$ wideband antenna array with ±45° dual polarizations is proposed. To achieve good radiation efficiency, cavity antenna is used in this work as the basic element. Feeding probes and strip line feeding networks are printed on general PCB substrate. The feeding circuits for exciting different polarizations are stacked and multilayer substrate step structure is used. Here, strip line to downward SMA connector transitions is also designed, which aids in integrating the proposed array with T/R modules located below and extending it to larger phased array. The antenna array is fabricated and measured. Simulated and measured impedance and radiation performances are also given and compared. The proposed antenna arrays show wide bandwidth of 30% from 10.9 to 14.8 GHz, and isolation of higher than 33 dB is also exhibited across the bandwidth. Furthermore, symmetrical patterns and cross-polarizations of below −25 dB are also demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A dual-polarized hybrid eight-antenna array operating in the 2.6-GHz band (2550–2650 MHz) for 5G communication multi-input multi-output (MIMO) operation in the smartphone is presented. The proposed hybrid antenna array elements are symmetrically placed along the long edges of the smartphone, and they are composed of two different four-antenna array types (C-shaped coupled-fed and L-shaped monopole slot) that exhibit orthogonal polarization. Therefore, coupling between the two antenna array types can be reduced, and the MIMO system performances are enhanced. A prototype of the proposed eight-antenna array is manufactured and measured. A good impedance matching (10 dB return loss or better), desirable cross-polarization discrimination (better than 15 dB), and an acceptable isolation (better than 12.5 dB) are obtained. Envelope correlation coefficient and channel capacity are also calculated to evaluate the MIMO performances of the proposed antenna array. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A microstrip-fed reconfigurable eccentric annular ring slot (EARS) antenna with switchable polarization is proposed. To generate orthogonal circular polarization (CP) radiations, two identical perturbation slots (PSs) are loaded below the eccentric ring-shaped slot. By incorporating a PIN diode switch across each PS, the proposed antenna can switch between left-hand CP (LHCP), right-hand CP (RHCP), and linear polarization (LP). All three polarizations have shown good impedance bandwidth and broad CP bandwidth that can cover the WLAN 2.4 GHz operating band (2400–2480 MHz). Furthermore, desirable gains of 2.49–2.82 dBi and 2.94–3.24 dBic are also exhibited at LP and LHCP/RHCP, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A microstrip-fed circular ring slot antenna (CRSA) with a fundamental mode at 2.45 GHz is initially studied. To suppress the additional harmonic modes excited by the ring slot, a single inverted U-shaped slot (or defected ground structure, DGS) is integrated into the CRSA. Through this, harmonic suppression over a wide bandwidth (approximately between 3 and 9 GHz) is achieved. This DGS can also be applied to other microstrip-fed ring slot antennas, such as square and triangular ring slot antennas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The design of a switchable microstrip-fed half annular ring slot antenna for multi-frequency operation is proposed. By incorporating three switches along the meandered tuning stub that is loaded on top of the half circular patch located within the circular slot, easy reconfigurability of four frequency bands over a frequency ratio of approximately 1.7:1 can be achieved. Furthermore, the proposed antenna structure does not require additional DC biasing circuit. Simulation and measurement results have demonstrated that the four frequency bands can exhibit good impedance matching, stable radiation patterns and desirable gains. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A compact (31 mm\,\times \,7 mm\,\times\,0.8 mm) uniplanar antenna designed for wireless local-area network (WLAN) operations in laptop applications is proposed. To achieve triple-band (2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz) WLAN operation, the structure of the proposed antenna is devised as an asymmetric dipole type, in which the 2.4/5.2 GHz operating bands are excited along the meandered feed line connected to a rectangular radiating element, and the excitation of the 5.8 GHz band comes from its asymmetric counterpart (with C-shaped parasitic strip). Interestingly, the proposed triple-band antenna can be reduced to a dual-band (2.4/5.2 GHz) one by simply tuning the length of the C-shaped parasitic strip. The simulated effects on the antenna performances by tuning the various vital parameters have been studied and experimentally verified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A square-shaped microstrip RFID tag antenna designed for 915 MHz band is proposed. The antenna is capacitively excited by a dual-offset coupling feed network with one of the feed lines a quarter-wavelength longer than the other. By selecting appropriate dimensions for the coupled lines and feed-lines, along with desirable coupling distance between the coupled line and square patch, the input impedance of the proposed tag antenna can be easily controlled, which results in excellent impedance matching. Moreover, by incorporating the dual-offset feed technique with the method of embedding a cross slot of unequal arm lengths into the square patch, the bandwidth of the circularly polarized (CP) operation can be enhanced. The measured 6-dB return-loss bandwidth of the tag antenna is 25 MHz (902–927 MHz), and its corresponding 3-dB axial-ratio (AR) bandwidth is 20 MHz (903–923 MHz). Further experimental results show that the proposed tag antenna can provide slightly better reading range and gain when mounted on a large metallic surface. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The design of a simple UHF (ultrahigh frequency) RFID (radio frequency identification) reader antenna that operates within the 900 MHz band (902–928 MHz) is studied. To generate circular polarization (CP) radiation, a novel method of loading a semicircular slot into the main circular radiating patch is proposed. To allow optimum impedance matching with enhanced CP bandwidth, the L-shaped probe-feed technique is employed in this design. From the experimental results, besides achieving a gain level of more than 7 dBic, the proposed antenna can also yield an impedance bandwidth (10-dB return loss) from 880 to 1100 MHz, while good CP performances between 901 to 930 MHz are exhibited. To further validate the experimental results, parametric studies are also carried out via simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study designed a 2\,\times\,2 circular disc array antenna with omnidirectional radiation pattern and polarization diversity. Each disc element was located above a circular slot fed by an L-shaped strip, in which the switching between two orthogonal linear polarizations (LP) and circular polarization (CP) were realized by controlling two pin diodes. To allow conical beam for all polarization senses, a meticulously designed cross-shaped feeding network is proposed, and besides showing a sufficient 10 dB return loss bandwidth that covers the 2.4 GHz band of WLAN operation, good cross-polarization level (XPL) were measured when the array operated in all available polarization senses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two novel array antennas (3 \times 2 and 3 \times 3) with broadband and high gain characteristics are proposed for the application of WiMAX base station. To maintain the same electric current intensity with identical phase for each array element, an asymmetrical feed-network which composed of microstrip T- junctions with 2:1 power ratio, quarter-wavelength impedance transformers, and 180^\circ phase shifters are devised, which in turn exhibits a desirable gain of more than 17 dBi at boreside direction for the proposed array antennas. Furthermore, by embedding a U-slot into all array elements, enhanced operating bandwidth measured along 14-dB return loss can be achieved, so that the WiMAX band operating between 3.3 and 3.8 GHz can be covered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A square patch passive RFID tag antenna designed for UHF band is presented in this article. To achieve compact size and circular polarization (CP) radiation, the square patch is embedded with a cross slot, while an L-shaped open-end microstrip line linked to a tag-chip and terminated by a shorting pin is capacitively coupled to the patch. By selecting an appropriate length for the microstrip line and its coupling distance with the radiating element, easy control on the input impedance of the proposed tag antenna which leads to excellent impedance matching is achieved. The measured 10-dB return-loss bandwidth of the tag antenna is 50 MHz (904–954 MHz), while its 3-dB axial-ratio bandwidth is 6 MHz (922–928 MHz). Further experiment shows that the tag antenna can provide better reading range when mounted on a metallic surface. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]