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A Compact Loop Antenna with Seven Resonant

Modes for Smartphones
Conference Paper September 2015
DOI: 10.1109/APWC.2015.7300159

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Di Wu

William S.W. Cheung

The University of Hong Kong

The University of Hong Kong

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A Compact Loop Antenna with Seven Resonant Modes for

Smartphones
Di Wu1, S. W. Cheung2, and T. I. Yuk3
Abstract  In this paper, a compact loop antenna with a
compact volume of only 6085 mm 3 for smartphone
applications is presented. The loop antenna consists of a 3-D
meandered loop and three parasitic elements to generate seven
resonant modes. The 3-D meandered loop is used to generate
four resonant modes, the 0.5-, 1-, 1.5- and 2- modes, while
the three parasitic elements are used to generate three other
resonant modes. With seven resonant modes, the loop antenna
forms a two wide frequency bands, a low-frequency band of
0.822-0.977 GHz and a high-frequency band of 1.65-3.6 GHz to
cover the GSM850. GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900, UMTS2100,
TD-SCDMA Band A & F, LTE2300, 2.4G WLAN, LTE 2600,
and LTE 3500 systems.

INTRODUCTION

Current smartphones are needed to be ultra-thin

and, at the same time, to support a wide range of
frequency bands for different cellular mobile
systems. Different types of antenna have been
proposed for multiband operations [1-7], but their
heights or clearance areas are not small enough for
smartphones applications. Loop antenna, with the
feature of multi-mode operation, is one of the
potential candidates to satisfy the requirements of
low profile and small clearance area for smartphone
applications. Usually loop antennas are designed to
have only three resonant modes, the 0.5-, 1-, and
1.5- modes [8-10]. Recently in [11-12], the loop
antennas were designed to have an additional fourthresonant mode, the 2- mode, generated using an
appropriate distance between the feed point and
shorting point of the loop radiator. However, the
bandwidth in the higher band of the antenna was only
1.7-2.58 GHz, not wide enough to cover the
LTE2500 and LTE3500 systems.
In this paper, a loop antenna with seven resonant
modes is proposed. The antenna consists of a
meandered loop and three parasitic elements. The
meandered loop generates four resonant modes, while
the three parasitic elements generate three other
resonant modes. Thus the loop antenna has a total of
seven resonant modes to form two wide frequency
bands, enough to cover the GSM850. GSM900,
DCS1800, PCS1900, UMTS2100, TD-SCDMA Band
A & F, LTE2300, 2.4G WLAN, LTE 2600, and LTE
3500 systems. The antenna is studied using the EM
simulation tool CST.

ANTENNA DESIGN

The proposed loop antenna, as shown in Fig. 1(a),

is installed at the bottom side of a PCB board with a
clearance area of 860 mm2. The rest of the metallic
part on the PCB is used as the ground plane having a
dimension of 11260 mm2. The overall size of the
PCB is 11260 mm2, a standard dimension of a
practical smartphone.
Detailed geometry and dimensions of the antenna
are shown in Fig. 1(b). The radiator of the antenna
consists of a 3-D meandered loop and three parasitic
elements. The meandered loop, from the feed point to
shorting point, has a total length of 158 mm and is
constructed using a strip with a width of 1 mm in
most length. The distance between the feed point and
the shorting point is very critical in generating an
additional fourth-resonant mode [11-12]. This
distance has been optimized using computer
simulation to be 20 mm. The structure of the
meandered loop is fixed in shape using a 5 mm
height rectangular block made of polyvinyl chloride
(PVC) having a relative permittivity of 2.73 and a
loss tangent of 0.01. The meandered loop itself can
generate two frequency bands, a lower and higher
frequency bands, for the antenna. Parasitic elements
#1 and #3 are printed on the substrate close to the
edge of the ground plane underneath the PVC
rectangular block. Parasitic element #2 is a 3D-folded
element and placed close to the feed point of the
meandered loop. The lengths of parasitic elements #
1, #2 and #3 are 25, 16 and 11 mm, respectively,
equivalent to about 1/4- at the corresponding center
frequencies of 1.7, 3.25 and 3.55 GHz, where is the
guided wavelength at each frequency. Each of these
parasitic elements can generate a resonant mode at
higher frequencies to enhance the bandwidth of the
higher band. The loop antenna is studied and
designed on a PCB having a thickness of 0.8 mm, a
relative permittivity of 3.5 and a loss tangent of 0.02.

________________________________________________________________________________________
1

Department of Electrical and Electronic Enginerring, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: diwu@eee.hku.hk, tel.: +852 68568676.
2
Department of Electrical and Electronic Enginerring, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: swcheung@eee.hku.hk, tel.: +852 28592425.
3
Department of Electrical and Electronic Enginerring, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: tiyuk@eee.hku.hk, tel.: +852 28597098.

,(((

355

bandwidth definition of using S11 -6 dB is a normal

practice in mobile antenna designs [13].

(a)
Fig. 2 Simulated S11 of the proposed antenna.

(b)
Fig. 1 Geometry of loop antenna: (a) total view and (b)
enlarged view of 3D meandered loop.
3

The simulated efficiency of the loop antenna is

shown in Fig. 3. The efficiency ranges from 77%90% in the lower frequency and 61%-91% in the
higher band. These are acceptable for mobile phones.
The simulated realized peak gain of the antenna is
shown in Fig. 4. The peak gain is from about 1.34-2
dBi in the lower frequency band and 2.77-6.35 dBi in
the higher frequency band.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

To study the effects of the meandered loop and the

three parasitic elements, the simulated S11 of the loop
antenna alone without any parasitic element, with
only parasitic element #1, with only parasitic element
#1 & 2, and with all parasitic elements #1, #2 and #3,
are shown in Fig. 2 for comparison.
It can be seen in Fig. 2 that the meandered loop
alone generates four resonant modes (same as in [1112]), a 0.5- mode at 0.9 GHz to form a lower
frequency band and a 1, 1.5 and 2- modes at 1.86,
2.12 and 2.63 GHz, respectively, to form a higher
frequency band. Adding parasitic element #1 to the
loop antenna generates a resonant mode at 1.7 GHz
in the higher band. Adding element #2 to it generates
another resonant mode at 3.25 GHz also in the higher
band. Adding element 3# to it generates another
resonant mode at 3.55 GHz in the higher band. As a
result, the 3D-meandered loop with three parasitic
elements can generate seven resonant modes to form
two wide frequency bands, a lower band having a
bandwidth for S11-6 dB of 0.822-0.977 GHz (0.155
GHz, 17.23%) and a higher band having a bandwidth
of 1.65-3.6 GHz (1.95 GHz, 74.29%). These two
bandwidths are large enough to cover the GSM850,
GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900, UMTS2100, TDSCDMA Band A/F, LTE2300, 2.4G WLAN,
LTE2600 and LTE3500 systems. Note that the

Fig. 3 Simulated efficiency of loop antenna.

Fig. 4 Simulated realized peak gain of loop antenna.

The 3D-radiation patterns of the antenna at the
resonant frequencies of 0.9, 1.7, 1.86, 2.12, 2.63,

356

3.25 and 3.55 GHz are shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen

in Fig. 5(a) that, the antenna radiation pattern at 0.9
GHz looks like that of typical monopole antenna,
very similar to traditional PIFA and monopole
antenna [13]. At the resonant frequencies in the
higher band, Figs. 5(b)-(g) show that the peak gain
directions in all the radiation patterns almost are at
the +z-direction.

(c)

(a)

(d)

(b)

(e)

357

(f)

(g)
Fig. 5 Simulated radiation patterns at (a) 0.9 GHz, (b)
1.7 GHz, (c) 1.86 GHz, (d) 2.12 GHz, (e) 2.63 GHz,
(f) 3.25 GHz, and (g) 3.55 GHz.
4

CONCLUSIONS

A compact loop antenna with seven resonant

modes has been presented for smartphone
application. The loop has a height of only 5 mm and
occupies an area of only 860 mm2. The seven
resonant modes form a dual band, enough to cover
the GSM850, GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900,
UMTS2100, TD-SCDMA Band A&F, LTE2300,
2.4G, WLAN, LTE2600 and LTE3500 systems.
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