A Tunable via-Patch Loaded PIFA with Size Reduction

A novel tunable planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) is described. A via-patch is introduced under the main radiating element to create a capacitive coupling effect and lower the operating frequency. The antenna size is reduced by half when compared to the conventional PIFA. Incorporating with an L-shaped opening on the ground plane, the proposed via-patch loaded PIFA exhibits a 10-dB return-loss bandwidth of 8.91% for 2.4 GHz ISM band applications. In the proposed approach, the capacitive patch is connected to the ground through a via while a coaxial feed is directly connected to the radiating element. This is different from other capacitive-loading, size-reduction schemes in which the capacitive patch is connected to the coaxial feed, thus not able to provide frequency tuning. By simply replacing the via in our antenna with a screw and adjusting the height of the via-patch by turning the screw, a tuning range of 0.8 GHz from 2.5-3.3 GHz can be achieved. This makes the proposed PIFA a convenient tunable small antenna. Both simulation and measurement results are presented together with parametric studies on the via-patch and L-shaped opening ground plane. © 2007 IEEE.