48

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

A Dual-Loop Antenna Design for Hepta-Band

WWAN/LTE Metal-Rimmed
Smartphone Applications
Yong-Ling Ban, Yun-Fei Qiang, Zhi Chen, Kai Kang, and Jin-Hong Guo

AbstractA simple direct-fed dual-loop antenna capable of

providing hepta-band WWAN/LTE operation under surroundings of an unbroken metal rim in smartphone applications is
proposed. The greatest highlight of this proposed antenna is that
it provides a simple and effective multiband antenna solution for
an unbroken metal-rimmed smartphone. The unbroken metal
rim with 5 mm in height embraces the system circuit board of
130 70 mm . Two no-ground portions of 10 70 mm and 5
70 mm are set on the top and bottom edge of the system circuit
board, respectively. In-between the two separate no-ground portions, there is a system ground of 115 70 mm connected with
the unbroken metal rim via a small grounded patch which divides
the unbroken metal rim into two strips. Finally, a dual-loop
antenna is formed by combining the inner system ground and two
strips. This proposed dual-loop antenna is capable of covering
GSM850/900/DCS/PCS/UMTS2100/LTE 2300/2500 operating
bands. Detailed design considerations of the proposed antenna are
described and both experimental and simulation results are also
presented and discussed.
Index TermsLoop antenna, unbroken metal rim, WWAN/LTE
antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

N recent years, smartphones have entered into a rapid development period and have gradually become the main communication tools [1]. Furthermore, a smartphone with an unbroken metal rim has become an obvious trend. The metal rim
can not only provide sufficient mechanical strength to extend
the service life of the smartphone, but also can possess a wonderful appearance, which is very desirable for consumers.
Manuscript received April 27, 2014; revised October 14, 2014; accepted
November 03, 2014. Date of publication November 07, 2014; date of current version December 31, 2014. This work was supported in part by the
National Higher-education Institution General Research Development Project
(2013ZX03001024), in part by the National Science and Technology Specific
Projects of China (ZYGX2013J013), in part by the National Science Fund
of China (61471098), and in part by the China Scholarship Fund and OATF,
UESTC.
Y.-L. Ban, Y.-F. Qiang, and K. Kang are with the Institute of Electromagnetics and School of Electronic Engineering, University of Electronic
Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu 611731, China (e-mail:
byl@uestc.edu.cn).
Z. Chen is with the National Key Lab of Science and Technology on Communication, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC),
Chengdu 611731, China.
J.-H. Guo is with Department of Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 63745.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2014.2368573

Not surprisingly, the performance of the previous antennas

designed for smartphones will be affected dramatically, if
the metal rim, without any modification, is placed around the
housing of the smartphone. In [2], it has presented a detailed
explanation about how the unbroken metal rim affects the
performance of the internal antenna. The unbroken metal rim
sets up a bad feedback link to the internal antenna which
introduces an undesired coupling between the unbroken metal
rim and the internal antenna. The undesired coupling affects
the performance of the internal antenna adversely which will
increase the design difficulty for antenna designers to achieve
multiband of an antenna.
Recently, several promising solutions [2], [3] have been
demonstrated which can resolve the effects of the metal rim. For
example, in [2], it has shown a method to reduce the effects of
the metal rim by inserting three gaps and two grounded patches.
Besides, by judiciously choosing the locations of the gaps and
the grounded patches, this method can alleviate the effects of
the metal rim. In [3], it has presented a compact slot antenna of
15.5 56.5 mm by adding several grounded patches between
the bottom system ground and the unbroken metal rim. The two
slots are fed by the same feeding strip, which can cover five
WWAN bands of GSM850/900/DCS/PCS/UMTS2100 operation. Seen from the above discussion, both of them occupy too
much space of the PCB and the width of the narrow edges of
these two antennas is always more than 15 mm, which are not
suitable for narrow-frame antenna designs [4], [5]. In addition,
another promising candidate for the metal-rimmed smartphone
antenna is exciting and employing the different chassis' characteristic modes [6]. However, its biggest drawback is the
narrow-band operations.
In order to widen the impedance bandwidth, many effective techniques have been reported in [7][13]. The usual
effective techniques of widening the impedance bandwidth
include the matching network [7][10], coupled-fed [11] and
reconfigurable technique [12], [13]. In [7], it has introduced
a novel antenna structure combining a nonself-resonant CCE
and a self-resonant ILA antenna occupying only 750 mm .
However, it needs a matching network which needs a correct
selection of low-loss components. In [8], it has proposed a
small antenna system using nonresonant planar elements for
2G, 3G, and 4G occupying about 700 mm . In [11], it has
presented a coupled-fed dual-loop antenna capable of providing
eight-band WWAN/LTE operations. This method indeed can
widen the impedance matching but it will increase the difficulty

0018-926X 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

BAN et al.: DUAL-LOOP ANTENNA DESIGN FOR HEPTA-BAND WWAN/LTE METAL-RIMMED SMARTPHONE APPLICATIONS

49

of antenna tuning in the final optimization process, because

its performance is very sensitive to the coupled gaps between
the feeding strip and shorting strip. In [12], the reconfigurable
antenna is controlled by one p-i-n diode to choose the antenna
mode between loop antenna mode and an inverted-F antenna
mode. Unfortunately, the p-i-n diode will also introduce insertion loss.
To alleviate these problems, a simple direct-fed dual-loop antenna capable of providing hepta-band WWAN/LTE operation
under surroundings of an unbroken metal rim in smartphone applications is proposed in this work. The unbroken metal rim is
directly fed by a
mini coaxial feed line and then connected to the system ground by a small grounded patch. Consequently the unbroken metal rim is divided into two stripes and
a dual-loop antenna is formed by combining the inner system
ground and two strips. The biggest merit of the proposed antenna is that it keeps the integrity of the metal rim and sufficient
bandwidth to cover hepta-band WWAN/LTE operation. Hence,
it is very promising for metal-rimmed smartphone applications.
The organization of this paper is arranged as follows. In
Section II, the antenna geometry and design are described. The
design process and parameters are discussed more in detail in
Section III. The proposed dual-loop antenna was fabricated
and the test results of the measured S parameter, gain, and
radiation patterns are shown in Section IV, in which the effects
of adding components and the user's hand, the specific absorption rate (SAR) values and state-of-the-art comparison are also
presented. Some conclusions are given in Section V.
II. PROPOSED ANTENNA CONFIGURATION
Fig. 1(a) shows the geometry of the proposed dual-loop antenna formed by an unbroken metal rim for WWAN/LTE smartphones, whose detailed structure and optimized dimensions are
given in Fig. 1(b). As illustrated in Fig. 1(a), a 0.8-mm thick
FR4 substrate of relative permittivity 4.4 and loss tangent 0.024
is used as the system circuit board. The system circuit board of
130 70 mm is embraced by an unbroken metal rim whose
height is of 5 mm and thickness is of 0.3 mm. The distance
between the system circuit board and the metal rim is 2 mm
[3]. Two no-ground portions of 10 70 mm and 5 70 mm
are set on the top and bottom edge of the system circuit board,
respectively. In-between the two separate no-ground portions,
there is a system ground plane with the length of 115 mm and
the width of 70 mm.
mini coaxial feed line is
Seen from Fig. 1(b), a
employed to excite the antenna connected to the feeding point
(point A) and the grounded point (point B). The distance
between the feeding point and the bottom edge of the system
circuit board is 25 mm. The unbroken metal rim directly fed
mini coaxial feed line is connected to the system
by a
ground by a small grounded patch. The unbroken metal rim
is divided into two stripes by the grounded patch. Finally, the
dual-loop antenna is formed by combining the inner system
ground and two strips. The distance between the grounded
patch and he bottom edge of the system circuit board is 50 mm.
is about 260 mm which
The length of the Loop 1
loop mode (at 0.67 GHz) as the
allows it to generate a

Fig. 1. Proposed antenna configuration: (a) Geometry of the metal-rimmed antenna for hepta-band operations in smartphone applications. (b) Detailed dimensions of the proposed antenna (Unit: mm).

fundamental mode. The high-order resonant mode of Loop 1

such as
and
modes are also excited. The
is about 156 mm (about
at
length of the Loop
1.13 GHz) which can provide two high-order resonant modes
( and
modes).
The two fundamental modes of the Loop 1 and Loop 2 generate a wide bandwidth to cover the GSM850/900 operation.
The desired upper-band DCS/PCS/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500
operation is provided by the high-order modes of Loop 1 and
Loop 2.
III. DESIGN PROCESS AND PARAMETER STUDY
A. Analyses of Resonant Modes and Current Distributions
To fully comprehend the excited modes of the proposed
dual-loop antenna, two reference antennas (Ref-1 and Ref-2)
are introduced. Fig. 2(a) shows the simulated input reactance of
the proposed antenna and the reference antennas, the case with
Loop 1 only (Ref-1) and the case with Loop 2 only (Ref-2).
The modes generated by the Ref-1 and the Ref-2 are marked as

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

Fig. 3. (a) Simplified equivalent circuits of the proposed antenna. (b) Simulated
input resistance of the proposed antenna and the case with Ref-1 (Loop 1 only),
and the case with Ref-2 (Loop 2 only).

Fig. 2. (a) Simulated input reactance and (b) simulated S parameters, respectively, of the proposed antenna, the case with Loop 1 only (Ref-1) and the case
with Loop 2 only (Ref-2).

and
(2)
The input impedance of the proposed antenna is marked as
Hence, the input impedance of
can be written as

and
, respectively, where represents the
-th order modes. Seen from the Fig. 2, the proposed dual-loop
has five resonant modes (
or
).
Fig. 2(b) shows the corresponding simulated S parameters of
the Fig. 2(a). The multiresonant character for both Ref-1 and
Ref-2 can be easily seen from Fig. 2(b). The bandwidth of each
resonant mode of Ref-1 and -2 is not wide enough to cover the
whole operating frequency. However, by combining the multiresonant modes provided by the Ref-1 and Ref-2, the proposed
antenna can provide two wide operating bands of 824960 MHz
and 17102690 MHz, respectively.
In addition, seen from Fig. 2(a), two modes of
are not appeared in the proposed antenna
while the other modes are still remaining. This is explained
as follows. Fig. 3(a) shows a simplified equivalent circuit of
the proposed antenna which is formed by the Ref-1 and Ref-2
antenna in parallel. The radiation impedance of Ref-1 (Loop1
only) and Ref-2 (Loop2 only) are marked, respectively, as

and
simultaneously, then according
Lastly, if
to (4), the reactance of input impedance is

(1)

(7)

(3)
where
and
are the input resistance and input reactance
of the proposed antenna respectively. Combining (1), (2) with
(3), the input reactant
can be written as

(4)
If

, the (4) can be simplified as

(5)

If

, the (4) can be simplified as

(6)

BAN et al.: DUAL-LOOP ANTENNA DESIGN FOR HEPTA-BAND WWAN/LTE METAL-RIMMED SMARTPHONE APPLICATIONS

Seen from Fig. 3(b), for the mode

, both the values of
and
(about 20 ) are comparable to the absolute value
of
(about 23 ). For the other mode
, the values
of
and
are about 45
and the absolute value of
is about 70 . Hence, according to (5), the absolute value of
is just smaller than the absolute value of
, but can
not approaching to be zero. That's why the two modes of
and
are not appeared in the proposed antenna.
However, for the mode
, the values of
(about 4
) and
(about 30 ) are very small relative to the absolute
value of
(about 223 ). The values of
and
are about
28 and 140 , respectively, for the mode
. According
to (5), the value of
will approximate to be zero indicating these two modes of
, and
will still exist
in the proposed antenna.
Again referring to Fig. 3(b), for the mode
, both the
values of
and
(about 18 ) are small relative to the absolute value of
(about 50 ). For the other mode
, the
value of
(about 30 ) is very small relative to the value of
(about 215 ) and the absolute value of
(about 122 ).
According to (6), the value of
will approximate to be
zero which means these two modes will appear in the proposed
antenna modes.
For the last two modes of
and
which have
a same resonant frequency at about 2.93 GHz. The (7) shows
the two modes of
and
can be preserved in
the proposed antenna.
All of the modes marked in Fig. 2(a) have been analyzed
reasonably. In order to distinguish the resonant modes of the
proposed antenna, simulated surface vector current distributions
at frequencies of 0.67 GHz, 1.12 GHz, 1.98 GHz, 2.33 GHz
and 2.93 GHz, which corresponds to the modes of
(or
), are
plotted in Fig. 4(a)(e), respectively. Seen from the Fig. 4(a),
the simulated surface current has a null point along the Loop
1 at 0.67 GHz indicating that the proposed antenna operates in
which is the fundamental mode of the Loop 1. The
other modes of
and
can be analyzed
easily from Fig. 4 and the surface current distributions of the
corresponding resonant frequencies in Fig. 4(b)(d).
However, an interesting phenomenon appears on the surface
current distribution of the proposed antenna at 2.93 GHz. Seen
from Fig. 4(e), although the two modes
and
have a same resonant frequency at 2.93 GHz, the surface current
is mainly distributed along the Loop 2, which can be explained
by using a simplified equivalent circuit and the input impedance
of Ref-1 and Ref-2 shown in Fig. 3. Seen from Fig. 3(a), the
radiation impedance of Ref-1
is larger than
the radiation impedance of Ref-2
at 2.93 GHz.
Hence, the current
flowing into
is smaller than the
current
flowing into
. Finally, the current
flows
into
will be very large and more obvious which agrees
the simulated surface current in Fig. 4(e).
B. Parameter Study of the Proposed Antenna
The two no-ground portions play an important role in the
impedance matching of the proposed antenna. The effects of the

51

Fig. 4. Simulated surface current distributions in the proposed antenna

at the corresponding resonant frequencies of (a) 0.67 GHz; (b) 1.12 GHz;
, (b)
, (c)
(c) 1.98 GHz; (d) 2.33 GHz; (e) 2.93 GHz. (a)
, (d)
, (e)
.

size of the no-ground portions are also analyzed, where the simulated results are included in Fig. 5(a) and (b). Fig. 5(a) shows
the influence on the antenna performance when varying the
width
of the top no-ground portion. Large effects on the
impedance matching of the frequencies over the lowerband
are seen when the length
varied from 5 to 15 mm For
mm, the impedance matching over the lower-band is
not good. As increasing the width
, the improved impedance
matching of the lower-band is obtained. In this study, the width
of the top no-ground portion is chosen as 10 mm for
good impedance matching and minimizing the size of the top
no-ground portion. Seen from Fig. 5(b), the width
of the
bottom no-ground portion affects the impedance matching over
the lower-band and upper-band. The impedance matching is
very poor if without the bottom no-ground portion. Taking into
account both bandwidth and miniaturization of the proposed
antenna, The width
of 5 mm is a suitable choice for the
bottom no-ground portion.
Effects of the positions of the feeding point and grounded
point are also analyzed in Figs. 6 and 7, respectively. With the
increase of the length
between the feeding point and the
bottom edge of the system circuit board, the length of Loop 1
will reduce while the length of Loop 2
will
increase. Therefore, seen from the Fig. 6, the corresponding
resonant frequencies of
and
are shifted to
higher frequencies and the corresponding resonant frequencies of
, and
are shifted to lower
frequencies.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

Fig. 7. Simulated input impedance for the proposed antenna as a function of the
length Lg between the ground point and the bottom edge of the system circuit
board (other dimensions are the same as given in Fig. 1).

Fig. 5. Simulated S parameters for the proposed antenna as a function of

of the top no-ground portion and (b) the width
of the
(a) the width
bottom no-ground portion (other dimensions are the same as given in Fig. 1).

Fig. 6. Simulated input impedance for the proposed antenna as a function of the
length Lf between the feeding point and the bottom edge of the system circuit
board (other dimensions are the same as given in Fig. 1).

Furthermore, for the lower-band, the variations of the resonant frequencies are very small while the variations of the

resonant frequencies are quite large for the upper-band. This

can be mainly explained as follows. The variations of the
lengths of Loop 1
and Loop 2
relative
to its resonant lengths of the fundamental modes (
and
) are very small which will result in small effect
on the corresponding resonant frequencies. However, for the
upper-band, the variation of the lengths of Loop 1
and Loop 2
relative to their resonant lengths of
the high order modes (
and
) are
relatively large which will result in significant effect on the
corresponding resonant frequencies.
Similar variations of the resonant frequencies of the proposed
antenna can be seen in Fig. 7 when altering the length
between the grounded point and the bottom edge of the system
circuit board. All of these variations can be explained by the
above theories in the foregoing paragraphs.
In addition, according to Figs. 6 and 7, the input resistance
of the proposed antenna can be tuned closer to 50 Ohms by adjusting the feeding and grounding point locations. The obtained
bandwidths can cover the two operating bands of 824960 MHz
and 17102690 MHz. Seen from the above parameter studies
about the proposed antenna, the method to cover LTE700 band
maybe achieved by reducing the length of Lg and Lf which can
shift the fundamental resonant frequencies to lower-frequencies. In order to achieve good impedance matching for the desired bandwidth, some matching circuit maybe needed.
At present, the typical thicknesses of smartphones are in the
range of 6.210.7 mm [15]. The proposed unbroken metal rim
whose height is of 5 mm can suit for the slimmest smartphones
at present. However, the thickness of the metal rim is not fixed
for different smartphones. Therefore, the discussion about the
effect on the performance of the proposed unbroken metal rim
with different heights is necessary. Results of the simulated S
parameters of the proposed antenna with different heights are
shown in Fig. 8. Tiny effects on the impedance matching of
the frequencies over the lower- and upper-band are seen from
Fig. 8 when the height of the metal rim varied from 5 to 9 mm.
Therefore, this proposed unbroken metal-rimmed antenna can
suit for many styles of smartphones with different profiles.

BAN et al.: DUAL-LOOP ANTENNA DESIGN FOR HEPTA-BAND WWAN/LTE METAL-RIMMED SMARTPHONE APPLICATIONS

Fig. 8. Simulated S parameters of the proposed antenna as a function of the

height of the unbroken metal rim (other dimensions are the same as given in
Fig. 1).

Fig. 9. Photos of the manufactured printed antenna for hepta-band

WWAN/LTE operation in a smartphone: (a) front side; (b) back side;
(c) testing environment.

IV. MEASUREMENT AND ANTENNA PERFORMANCE

A. Free Space
The proposed unbroken metal-rimed antenna for hepta-band
operations was fabricated and tested, as shown in Fig. 9. From
Fig. 9, it can be seen that the unbroken metal rim is fixed by
several foams with thickness of 2 mm. The simulated results
are obtained by Ansoft HFSS version 13, and the measured
results are tested by an Agilent N5247A vector network analyzer which the testing environment has shown in Fig. 9(c). The
part of the cable at the outer system ground may affect the antenna performances. Hence, the ferrite bead used in the measurements is mainly to reduce this effect. The measured and simulated S parameters for the prototype are presented in Fig. 10.
The measured impedance bandwidth based on [14][19], which
is widely used as the design specification of the WWAN/LTE
smartphone antennas, is seen to cover 3:1 VSWR the desired
824960 MHz and 17102690 MHz bands for the hepta-band
WWAN/LTE operations.
The radiation characteristics, the gain and the total efficiency
of the proposed antenna are also measured in the SATIMO microwave anechoic chamber. Fig. 11 plots the measured radiation patterns at 86 MHz, 925 MHz, 1830 MHz, 2100 MHz, and

53

Fig. 10. Simulated and measured S parameters against frequency for the proposed unbroken metal rim antenna.

2520 MHz, respectively, which are similar to those of many reported LTE/WWAN antennas [21][23]. Dipole-like radiation
patterns at 860 MHz and 925 MHz are seen in Fig. 11(a) and (b),
and omnidirectional radiation in the azimuthal plane (xy-plane)
is observed. The high-order resonant frequencies at 1830 MHz,
2100 MHz, and 2520 MHz are also plotted in Fig. 11(c), (d), and
(e) from which the complementary
and
radiation in the
xy-plane are seen. Hence, the patterns of the proposed antenna at
upper-band are still suitable for the practical communication environments. This is mainly because the transmitting wave transmitted from a base station will have comparable levels for the
two components of
and
after reflection, scattering and
diffraction. For example, in the case of the xy-plane pattern at
2100 MHz in Fig. 11(c), at
, 180 , the
components
are both nulls but the
components are not nulls, which can
ensure a smartphone can receive at least one component of
or
to guarantee the quality of the communication. Therefore, these complementary patterns of the proposed antenna in
smartphone can provide the robustness for the practical communication environments.
In addition, dipole-like radiation patterns in Fig. 11(a) and
(b) can be explained as follows. Fig. 12 shows the evolution
from the traditional folded dipole to our proposed antenna.
Fig. 12(a) shows a traditional folded dipole (
mode). In
Fig. 12(b), the traditional folded dipole is divided into two
portions, where the top portion (solid line) is provided by
the antenna element and the bottom portion (dotted line) is
simplified from the system ground. It means that the antenna
element plus the system ground behave as a
dipole
(the antenna element is one part of
folded monopole and
the PCB is the other part of
folded monopole). Hence,
the antenna element in Fig. 12(b) is called folded monopole
antenna. Fig. 12(c) is just a simple deformation from Fig. 12(b).
Fig. 12(d) is achieved from Fig. 12(c) by turning the bottom
(dotted line) to the top-side. In Fig. 12(d), the outer portion
(solid line) is provided by the metal rim and the inner portion
is still simplified from the system ground. Finally, comparing
Fig. 12(d) with Fig. 4(a), the similar current distributions along

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

Fig. 11. Measured 2-D radiation patterns at (a) 860 MHz, (b) 925 MHz, (c) 1830 MHz, (d) 2100 MHz, and (e) 2520 MHz for the proposed antenna (red line is
, blue line is
, Unit: dBi).

and the corresponding total efficiency is larger than 60%. As a

result, the measured radiation characteristics of the proposed
antenna within the operating band are suitable for meeting the
requirement for smartphone systems [24].
B. Effect of Handset Components

Fig. 12. Evolution of our proposed antenna. (a) Traditional folded dipole.
folded monopole
(b) Folded monopole (the antenna element is one part of
folded monopole). (c) Deformed
and the system ground is the other part of
folded monopole. (d) Simplification from our proposed antenna (the solid line
is provided by the antenna element and the dotted line is simplified from the
system ground. Both the solid dots and hollow dots denote the current nulls
where the current direction will change to the opposite direction).

the outer metal rim and inner system ground are obtained.
Hence, the entire evolution from the traditional folded dipole to
our proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 12 which has explained
the dipole-like radiation patterns at lower frequency bands.
In addition, seen from Fig. 12(d), the current distribution
along the outer portion (solid line) is opposite to the current
distribution along the inner portion. The proposed antenna
can still radiate effectively, which is due to that our proposed
antenna behaves as an asymmetric dipole causing the current
distribution
.
The measured total efficiency and antenna gain of the fabricated antenna are presented in Fig. 13. For the lower-band
of GSM850/900 (824960 MHz), the antenna gain varies
from about 1.2 to 2.0 dBi and the total efficiency is about
6279%, which are acceptable for practical application. For the
desired upper bands of DCS/PCS/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500
(17102690 MHz), the obtained antenna gain is 1.03.9 dBi

The antenna performance will be affected if some components closed to the proposed antenna. Hence, it is necessary
to study the impacts of mounting the display upon the system
ground and having some components (such as speaker and
USB) in the no-ground portions.
Fig. 14 shows the configuration of the proposed antenna with
a display and two other components. The display with size 113
68 2 mm is directly mounted upon the system ground. The
volumes of the speaker and USB are 8 18 3 mm and 6 8
3 mm , respectively. All these components are assumed to be
perfect electric conductor (PEC) for the simulation.
The simulated S parameter and total efficiency are shown
in Fig. 15(a) and (b). Seen from Fig. 15(a), the primary effect
of these components is deterioration in the impedance bandwidth of the original antenna, especially at lower frequencies.
However, it still can provide sufficiently bandwidth to cover
GSM850/900 operations. To further investigate the effect on antenna performance when adding some components, the simulated total efficiency is shown in Fig. 15(b). The total efficiency
is defined as the ratio of radiated-to-stimulated power of the antenna. For the lower-band [see Fig. 15(b)], the simulated efficiency dropped by 2.5% on the average. For the upper-band,
the difference between these two simulated efficiency is about
5.3% on the average.
C. Effect of Hand
The effects of the user's hand on the performance of proposed
antenna have also been studied. Fig. 16 shows the human hand
model directly gripping the handset at different position: at the
top of the handset (Top position), in the middle of the handset

BAN et al.: DUAL-LOOP ANTENNA DESIGN FOR HEPTA-BAND WWAN/LTE METAL-RIMMED SMARTPHONE APPLICATIONS

55

Fig. 13. Measured antenna gain and total efficiency (mismatching loss
included) across the operating bands for the proposed antenna.

Fig. 14. Configuration of the proposed antenna with a display and two other
components (a speaker and a USB).

(Middle position), and at the bottom of the handset (Bottom position). The relative permittivity and conductivity of the human
hand model [28] is depended on the frequency. Hence, the relative permittivity and conductivity in the simulations are set as
dispersive parameters whose values are obtained from [28].
The simulated S parameters and total efficiencies for these
configurations are shown in Fig. 17(a) and (b), respectively.
Seen from Fig. 17(a), it is evident that the matching bandwidths
are widened for different gripping positions. This is mainly
because the hand as a very lossy medium must absorbs a lot
of power and then improves the bandwidth when touching the
metal rim. The absorption losses with different hand-gripping
positions are shown in Fig. 17(b). Compared to the case of the
antenna without the hand, the simulated efficiencies drop from
75% to 23%32% on the average in the lower-band. For the
upper-band, the simulated efficiencies for different gripping
positions are stabilized around 30% on the average.
D. SAR Performance
The SAR simulation model and the simulated SAR values
for 1-g head tissues are shown in Fig. 18 and Table I, which
are provided by CST version 2012. In the simulation, the smartphone handset is placed close to the head phantom ear with a
distance of 1 mm and is inclined to the vertical line shown in
the figure by 60 . The input power for the SAR testing is 24
dBm for 859 and 925 MHz and 21 dBm for 1795, 1920, 2045,

Fig. 15. Simulated results of the antenna with some components. (a) S parameter; (b) total efficiency (mismatching loss included).

Fig. 16. Configuration of hand grip smartphone at different positions (the metal
rim is directly touched by the hand in each simulated mode).

2350 and 2595 MHz and the corresponding simulated 1-g SAR
values and the S parameter all listed in Table I. It can be seen that
the obtained SAR values for the proposed antenna are below the
SAR limit of 1.6 W/kg for 1-g tissue which demonstrates that

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

TABLE I
SIMULATED SAR VALUES FOR 1-G HEAD ISSUE

TABLE II
OF ANTENNA DESIGN IN THIS
AND IN RECENT PUBLICATIONS

COMPARISON

PAPER

Fig. 17. Simulated results of hand grip at different positions. (a) S parameters;
(b) total efficiency (mismatching loss included).

Fig. 18. Simulation model of SAR value for the proposed antenna.

the presented antenna is acceptable for practical smartphone application [25][27].

E. State-of-the-Art Comparison
In order to identify the performance of the proposed antenna
with respect to the state-of-the-art, the proposed antenna is com-

pared to designs presented in recent publications. Only antennas

whose chassis were surrounded by the metal rim are chosen for a
fair comparison. The key performances we care are the integrity
of the metal rim, bandwidth and the total efficiency.
Compared to [2], the proposed antenna can keep the integrity
of the metal rim which is desirable for consumers. Notice that
the proposed antenna's area is larger than the antenna in [3],
[29] and [30]. However, the performances of the proposed antenna are still acceptable with respect to the wide bandwidth and
total efficiency. Furthermore, the large no-ground portion in the
proposed design can be reused which has been demonstrated in
Part IV (B). Therefore, the presented comparison shows that the
proposed antenna has good performance with respect to the integrity of the metal rim, bandwidth and total efficiency.
V. CONCLUSION
A simple direct-fed dual-loop antenna capable of providing
hepta-band WWAN/LTE operation under surroundings of an

BAN et al.: DUAL-LOOP ANTENNA DESIGN FOR HEPTA-BAND WWAN/LTE METAL-RIMMED SMARTPHONE APPLICATIONS

unbroken metal rim in smartphone applications is proposed

and studied in this paper. By combining the multiresonant
character of the dual-loop antenna, the proposed antenna
can provide two wide operating bands of 824960 MHz and
17102690 MHz, respectively. A prototype of the proposed
unbroken metal-rimmed antenna has been successfully designed, fabricated, and measured. The obtained measured
results including S parameter, antenna peak gain, and total
efficiency are presented, which can meet the requirements for
smartphone systems. Furthermore, the simulated SAR values
of the proposed antenna are less than the 1.6 W/kg for 1-g head
tissue In addition, the greatest highlight is that the proposed
antenna keeps the integrity of the metal rim very well, which is
very promising for metal-rimmed smartphone applications.
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Yong-Ling Ban was born in Henan, China. He

received the B.S. degree in mathematics from
Shandong University, China, the M.S. degree in
electromagnetics from Peking University, China,
and the Ph.D. degree in microwave engineering from
the University of Electronic Science and Technology
of China (UESTC), Chengdou, Sichuan, China, in
2000, 2003, and 2006, respectively.
In July of 2006, he joined the Xi'an Mechanical
and Electric Information Institute (from China North
Industries Group Corporation) as a microwave engineer. He then joined Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, first as
a RF antenna design engineer and then as senior design engineer. At Huawei,
he designed and implemented various terminal antennas for 15 data card and
mobile phone products customized from leading telecommunication industries
like Vodafone. Since September 2010, he has been an Associate Professor of
microwave engineering with UESTC. His research interests include wideband
small antennas for 3G/LTE handheld devices, MIMO antenna decoupling techniques, and smart antennas for wireless AP. He is the author of over 40 referred
journal and conference papers on these topics.
Prof. Ban holds 15 granted and pending Chinese and overseas patents.

Yun-Fei Qiang was born in Anhui, China, in 1990.

He received the B.S. degree in applied physics from
the Hefei University of Technology, Heifei, China, in
2012. He is currently pursuing the M.S. degree at the
University of Electronic Science and Technology of
China (UESTC), Chengdou, Sichuan, China.
His main research interests are multiband smartphone antennas for wireless communications, especially for narrow-frame antennas and metal-rimmed
antennas designs for smartphone applications, as well
as base station antennas and antenna synthesis.

58

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

Zhi Chen received the B.Eng., M.Eng., and Ph.D.

degrees in electrical engineering from the University
of Electronic Science and Technology of China
(UESTC), Chengdou, Sichuan, China, in 1997,
2000, 2006, respectively.
In April 2006, he joined the National Key Lab of
Science and Technology on Communications (NCL),
UESTC, where he was a Professor. He was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Riverside, CA, USA, during 2010 and 2011. His current research interests include wireless communication and
signal processing, microwave communication, and THz communication.
Dr. Chen has served as a reviewer for various international journals and conferences, including the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, etc.

Kai Kang was born in 1979. He received the

B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from the
Northwestern Polytechnical University, China, in
2002, and the joint Ph.D. degree from the National
University of Singapore, Singapore, and Ecole
Suprieure D'lectricit, France, in 2008.
From 2006 to 2010, he was a Senior Research Engineer at the Institute of Microelectronics, A*STAR,
Singapore. From 2009 to 2010, he was an Adjunct
Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore. From 2010 to 2011, he was a Principle Engineer at Globalfoundries. Since June 2011, he has been with the University of
Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdou, Sichuan,
China, where he is now Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Electronic
Engineering. His research interests are RF and mm-wave integrated circuits design and modeling of on-chip devices.

Jin-Hong Guo received the B.E. degree in electronic

engineering in 2010 from the University of Electronic
Science and Technology of China (UESTC) and the
Ph.D. degree in 2014 in biomedical engineering from
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), China.
Dr. Jinhong was a Research Engineer for RFIC design at VIRTUS Integrated Circuit Design Lab, NTU,
from March 2011 to August 2011. From August 2011
to March 2014, he was a Research Assistant with the
Applied Microfluidicological Lab jointly with the Institute of Microelectronics, A*STAR, Singapore. In
April 2014, he co-founded the JESON Medical Co., Ltd., where he is now the
Chief Scientist.
Dr. Jinhong has published many patents which have been commercialized
by JESON. He has authored more than 40 journals and international conference papers. His research interests include micro/nano solid-state biosensors,
electrofluidics, acoustofluidics, optofluidics sensors and actuators, nano-electromagnetics, and microwave cytometry. He also serves as a reviewer for many
reputable journals, including various IEEE TRANSACTIONS, as well as Lab On
a Chip, Biomicrofluidics, Biomedical Microdevice, Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, Electrophoresis, Progress In Electromagnetic Research, etc.