A /2 Loop Antenna for GPS Application in Mini-Laptop

Yuan-chih Lin Shun-Yun Lin , Hong-Wen Wu and Wen-shyng Cheng

1, 2 2 2

Radio-Frequency Coomunication Resaerch and Development Center, Cheng Shiu University, Kaohsiung county, Taiwan Department of Electonicl Engineering, Cheng Shiu University, Kaohsiung county, Taiwan 1 linych@ema.ee.nsysu.edu.tw 2 research@csu.edu.tw
Abstract The proposed antenna design was suit for GPS ( Global Positioning System application in mini-laptop terminal. It was consisted of six elements, including system ground plane, antenna ground plane, clearance area, U-shaped loop strip, shored point, and a 50 RF feeding cable. Due to extending by cable, the proposed antenna can be regarded as an extended antenna. The resonant mechanism was excited by the U-shaped loop strip which total current length is about /2 at 1.575 GHz to meet the requirements of the GPS reception. For total thickness, the proposed design has very low profile, less than 10 mm. For related antenna performance, the impedance bandwidth can be reached up to 120 MHz@10 dB which can provide a highly tolerance for assembly and the polarized behavior is also tending toward RHCP which is helpful for GPS signal reception. In addition, the proposed design has a good immunity to resist the detuning by nearby metal devices such as I/O connectors, speaker, and CCD etc. Detailed analysis and explanation will be presented Index Terms U-shaped loop antenna, antenna, GPS antenna, RHCP, EMC. capability for practical placement. The main reason for EMC is the differential current mode was generated between the U-shaped

metal loop and antenna ground plane and the common mode current was formed by loop antenna. In addition, the proposed loop antenna was also shown right-hand elliptical polarization behavior which is good for GPS signal reception. Thats, the proposed design can not only immune EM interference to nearby metal devices like cables, connectors, CCD, and LCD display but also has a right reception for GPS application. Further detailed information and results will be presented in conference. II. ANTENNA DESIGN Fig. 1(a) shows the scheme of the proposed antenna placed in a mini-laptop terminal. The proposed antenna was placed close to the left-side corner of the upper portion, the metal frame for 10.8 inches LCD. The lower portion of the laptop is for keyboard and printed circuit board.

I. INTRODUCTION Portable devices have become one of imperative tools for modern life, especially for laptop terminals. Most of laptop venders deeply hope that multi-antenna can be embedded into casing, including WWAN, Wi-Fi, and GPS applications. Due to the limited space above the LCD frame, all of the antennas in laptop should be compact and low profile. For conventional GPS application, patch antenna can be easily found in PND (Portable Navigation Device) and external GPS receiver. The main reason is that patch antenna has good performance in directivity and RHCP. However, it is very hard to be implemented conventional patch antenna in laptop terminal due to limitation not only in dimension and narrow band signal but also in dimensions and weight. In general, the kinds of one quarter wave length resonant antenna like monopole antenna and Inverted-F antenna using FR4 dielectric substrate 0.8 mm thick are major types for light weight and low profile [1]-[5]. Nevertheless, these kinds of antennas are too sensitive to place above the LCD metal frame because of the unstable coupling issues among antenna, cable and metal frame. Therefore, a good candidate for GPS application in laptop terminal is not only in low profile and radiation performance but also in EMC stability. For such perspective applications and requests, we presented a novel low-profile loop antenna with EM compatibility placed above the LCD metal frame in this paper. By embedding a U-shaped loop on FR4 dielectric substrate to form
a resonant current path for /2 at 1.575 GHz, the proposed antenna is capable of covering GPS L1 band at 1.575 GHz and stable EMC

Fig. 1. (a) Scheme of the proposed antenna in mini-laptop terminal of 10.8 inches LCD frame.

978-1-4244-2802-1/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE

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and desire different practical demands. Due to loop resonant mechanism, the proposed design has a good EMC capability and immunity to nearby metal devices. Notice that the proposed antenna also can be implemented in handheld devices, such as handset, PND, smart phone, and PDAs. Detailed explanation and analysis will be discussed in next section.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The results of the measured and simulated return loss of the proposed antenna was shown in Fig. 2. The measured result was obtained from practical prototype on network analyzer and the simulated result was extracted from Ansoft HFSS simulator. Good agreement can obviously observed between the practical prototype and EM simulator Ansoft HFSS [6]. The central resonant frequency has been operated at about 1575 MHz and the bandwidth can reach over 100 MHz (1500 ~ 1620 MHz) based on the requirement of 2:1 VSWR. It sufficiently shows the proposed antenna easily covers GPS L1 band. Additionally, the proposed antenna design also has a excellent tolerance for frequency shifting and impedance detuning.

Fig. 1. (b) Geometry and detailed dimensions of the proposed U-shaped loop antenna. The antenna consists of six elements, including system ground plane, antenna ground plane, clearance area, U-shaped loop strip, shored point, and a 50 RF feeding cable, as shown in Fig. 1 (b). The proposed antenna was placed on the top edge of the LCD metal frame of 10.8 inches of a practical mini-laptop terminal, which has a certain distant d from left-side corner. In general viewpoint, the proposed thin low-profile antenna obviously has sufficient efficiency and wide bandwidth, and good uniform radiation pattern. Due to asymmetrical placement on the system ground, right
hand elliptical polarization (RHCP-like) can be generated. In this paper, RHCP-like behavior has been obtained by placing the proposed antenna at the left-side of the top edge. In addition, the maximum radiation directivity was also faced to the sky to receive better satellite signals. As shown in Fig. 1 (b), the whole dimension of the proposed antenna is 50 x 9 mm2, printed on FR4 dielectric substrate 0.4 mm thick. For practical application, antenna system ground plane should be shorted to system ground plane. Here the clearance area of 32 x 5 mm2 must be reserved for loop antenna. To take a further look on the construction of the proposed antenna, the power source was input from a 50 RF coaxial cable to excite the proposed antenna. The resonance part of the proposed antenna is the U-shaped strip (in pink) which provides a current path for /2 loop resonance at 1575 MHz on FR4 substrate, a = 32 mm. The proposed antenna has a good tuning mechanism in impedance matching by modifying the metal strip width and space of the U-shaped loop. Consequently, the resonant central frequency can easily control by tuning the length of the U-shaped strip. Therefore, it can achieve excellent performance

Fig. 2. Measured and simulated return loss of the proposed antenna for mini-laptop terminal

Now, the related factors of the proposed antenna will be divided into two parts. One is antenna factors (U-shaped strip and gap between loop strip and antenna, a and b) and another is environment factor in laptop (placement location and EMC effect, d and g). Fig. 3(a) shows that the resonant frequency shifting significantly depends on the length of the U-shaped loop strip, a = 26 ~ 32 mm. This is a true evidence to prove the resonant frequency as a function of a, U-shaped strip. As shown in Fig 3(b), almost no variation in frequency shifting and impedance detuning are observed for b (gap between Ushaped loop strip and antenna ground plane) varied from 1 ~ 2 mm. antenna. From the results in Fig. 3, we can really understand the proposed antenna is simple to use for practical application.

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(a)

(a) (b)

(b) Fig. 3 Related factor study on antenna part. (a). The result of simulated return loss in the variation of a, (b)

Fig. 4 Related factor study on environment part. (a). gap d between antenna and ground plane, (b) nearby metal effect on return loss

To further shows the effects of the antenna location and environment of LCD metal frame, as shown in Fig. 4. Due to industrial design space and interference considerations, embedded antenna had better perform in stable status, especially for impedance matching. From the results in Fig. 4, the distance d varies from 20 ~ 50 mm lead to frequency shifting but the antenna impedance also sustains a good level for the requirement at 2:1 VSWR, as shown in Fig. 4(a). For 3 EMC capability study, a metal device of 8 x 8 x 2 mm placed between the antenna ground plane and system ground plane. The metal device can be a screw or connector which is general found in LCD metal frame. As seen in Fig. 4(b), it is almost no difference either for resonant frequency or for impedance response.
The main reason for EMC is the differential current mode was generated between the U-shaped metal loop and antenna ground plane and the common mode current was formed by loop antenna. Thats, the proposed design can not only immune EM interference to nearby metal devices like cables, connectors, CCD, and LCD display

In Fig. 5 (a) and (b), we make a comparison on the radiation effect of various cable length. Fig. 5 (a) is for 50mm cable and Fig.5 (b) is for 320-mm cable, respectively. Here there is no significant difference in radiation patterns. Thats, coaxial cable length is not a critical issue for radiation patterns. Due to the antenna height placed in x-axis, it leads to the antenna having current distribution along y-axis. Therefore, a omni-direction radiation patterns can be obtained in x-z plane. Due to the reflection effect of the system ground plane, the maximum power in x direction (toward to the sky) is larger than that of +x direction. It is helpful to receive the GPS satellite signals. As for the real radiation performance, we make a clear comparison in gain level, as shown in table 1.The diameter of the cable is 1.13 mm, which is general type for the connection between antenna and laptop. To clarify the loss effect of cable length, there are two types (50/320 mm) for test. It significantly shows the length of the extended cable also plays a key factor in antenna performance. Here we can observe about 2 ~ 3 dB difference between longer cable (320 mm) and shorter cable (50 mm). In general, longer extending

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coaxial cable leads to more power loss due to the loss effect of the coaxial cable (dB/m) and noise interference from system ground plane. Hence, detailed specification of coaxial cable is imperative for antenna placement in practical laptop terminals.

extended antenna in laptop, the cable issue either in length or type still should be concerned in practical application. If to design the antenna integrated with cable at the same time, it makes much simpler rule to evaluate the antenna design and cable selection. In addition, the RHCP-like behavior of the proposed antenna was also suitable for GPS satellite signal reception. Table 1 the comparison of cable length in gain level

Length 320 mm 50 mm

x-z plane -0.16 2.15

y-z plane 0.11 -0.48

x-y plane -2.38 0.37

(a)

Fig. 6. Simulated radiation patterns in RHCP and LHCP.

(b)
Fig. 5. Measured radiation patterns. (a) for shorter cable, 50 mm. (b) for longer cable, 320 mm.

REFERENCES
[1] Chin-Long Tsai, Sheng-Ming Deng, Ching-Hung Tseng, Sheau-Shong Bor, A shorted square-ring slot antenna with a branched slot for the 1575 MHz and 2.4 GHz dual-band operations, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, Volume 51, Issue 2, Date: February 2009, Pages: 402-405 [2] Kin-Lu Wong, Chih-Hua Chang, Brian Chen, Sam Yang, Compact shorted patch antenna mounted above the system ground plane of a wireless device for WLAN operation, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, Volume 48, Issue 3, Date: March 2006, Pages: 474-476 [3] Kin-Lu Wong, Shih-Jia Liao, Uniplanar coupled-fed printed PIFA for WWAN operation in the laptop computer, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters,Volume 51, Issue 2, Date: February 2009, Pages: 549-554 [4] Kin-Lu Wong, Fang-Hsien Chu, Internal planar WWAN laptop computer antenna using monopole slot elements, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, Volume 51, Issue 5, Date: May 2009, Pages: 1274-1279 [5] Yale Scott, Gregory S., and Mendolia, MULTIBAND ANTENNA HAVING REVERSEFED PIFA, United States Patent, US 6,738,023 B2, May 18, 2004.. [6] http://www.ansoft.com/products/hf/hfss/, Ansoft Corporation HFSS.

The proposed U-shaped loop Antenna has elliptically polarized characteristic preferred RHCP orientation, as shown in Fig. 6. The kind of right hand elliptical polarization is very helpful for GPS signal reception. From further study on the antenna placement, we observed the position of the proposed antenna is the most important key to decide the polarized behavior. By placing antenna at the left side on the top of LCD frame, right hand elliptical polarization (RHEP, so-called RHCP-like) can be achieved. IV. CONCLUSION A promising /2 loop antenna for GPS application has been proposed and verified in laptop terminal. Due to differential current mode generated between antenna and ground plane, the proposed antenna has a good EMC capability to fit various environments and easily assemble in laptop. For

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