18 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

5, 2006

A Folded Planar Inverted-F Antenna for

GSM/DCS/Bluetooth Triple-Band Application
Won-Il Kwak, Seong-Ook Park, Member, IEEE, and Jong-Sung Kim

Abstract—A new internal triple-band planar inverted-F an-

tenna (PIFA) is presented. It is implemented by printing radiating
conductors over both sides of an FR4 board. The geometrical
parameters and electrical performances of the antenna can be
obtained by cutting embedded slots on the patch surfaces and
realizing electric via holes between two layers of the patch. This
antenna covers GSM (880–960 MHz), DCS (1710–1880 MHz),
and Bluetooth (2400–2484 MHz) bands. Features of each band
can be easily optimized by tuning the position, shape, and size
of the embedded slots and via holes in the radiating patch. The
experimental results of the proposed antenna are discussed and
compared with simulation results from the available simulator to
validate our proposed antenna design.
Index Terms—Antenna, embedded slot, planar inverted-F an-
tenna (PIFA), via hole.

I. INTRODUCTION

A great demand has been putting on reducing the handset

size due to today’s market trends. Accordingly, internal
antenna has been a very good choice compared to the con-
ventional external antennas. Now, a planar inverted-F antenna
(PIFA) is proved to be the most attractive candidate for mobile
handsets due to its compact size and good performance. The
PIFA consists of a ground plane, a top patch, a feed cable, and
a shorting post, which result in a quarter-wavelength resonator;
that is, the reduction of 50% in length can be obtained by
comparing to the conventional half-wavelength radiator. Owing
to these features, many PIFA designs have been investigated,
particularly for achieving dual- and triple-band mobile phones.
Among the several kinds of PIFA for multifrequency opera-
tions, there have been the two or more separate patches [1]–[3],
the patch with embedded U-shaped slot [4], the patches with
folded or branch lines [5], [6], the multilayered patches for
wider bandwidth [7], and so on. Since such design methods
use separate patches or current paths, by meandering, folding
and embedded slot for each band of multiband operations, they
have limitations in antenna size and impedance bandwidth,
especially for 900-MHz lower band [8].
In this letter, we present a new PIFA design with a two-lay-
ered patch with embedded slots and via holes for the desired
triple-band operations of GSM, DCS, and Bluetooth applica-
tions, which can be produced by parasitic shorted patch and ex-
tension of patch conductors through vertical via holes between
Manuscript received August 30, 2005; revised November 15, 2005.
W.-I. Kwak and S. O. Park are with the Information and Communications
University, DaeJeon, Korea.
J.-S. Kim is with the Department of Multimedia Engineering, Kyungsung
University, Pusan, Korea (e-mail: jskim@ks.ac.kr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2005.863617
1536-1225/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed PIFA.
two layers. This antenna is fabricated and the measured results
are compared to simulation results.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND RESULT
The geometry we choose for operating at GSM/DCS/Blue-
tooth bands is illustrated in Fig. 1. An air layer of 7 mm is
utilized between the patch and ground plane with thickness of
1.0 mm and area size of 32 80 , a typical size of handset
PCB board. Two layers of the patch are separately drawn at
the right-hand side of Fig. 1 for the convenience of easier ex-
plaining the proposed operating mechanism. The shorted post
and coax feed, denoted by a black circle and a black rectangle,
respectively, mechanically support the patch and are connected
directly to both the upper and lower layers of the patch. The trav-
eling paths of the resonant modes are determined by the length,
width, and position of the embedded slots on both faces of two
layers and via holes between both layers. Detailed dimension
for the antenna design of Fig. 1 is listed in Table I. The two-lay-
ered patch is composed of five subpatches, p1 and p2 on the
upper layer and p3, p4, and p5 on the lower layer. Their corre-
sponding dimensions are determined by the positions and sizes
of five embedded slots, here all 0.5 mm in width. Four holes are
KWAK et al.: FOLDED PIFA FOR TRIPLE-BAND APPLICATION 19

TABLE I
DIMENSION OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA

Fig. 2. Simulated and measured return losses for the proposed antenna.

provided to create the folded paths for multiband operations.

Slot 1 (s1) splits the radiating patch into the shorted upper small
plate (p1) and the remaining plates (p2, p3, p4, and p5) joined
by via holes. Differently from only the parasitic effect near the
main patch in [9], p1 can take a part in giving a part of resonant
paths, so contributing to size reduction and bandwidth broad-
ening, in particular for higher bands due to the direct connection
to the shorted and feed points. The small patch of 3 12
lowers the resonant frequencies for GSM/DCS/Bluetooth bands
to approximately 5%. The lower band (GSM) starts from the
feed point of the lower layer, propagates to v3 and v4 of p3, and
then extends through the holes to the upper layer (p2). Two slots
(s2 and s3) are cut into the upper plane of the patch antenna in
order for the top plate current to flow around the slots, an elec-
trically longer path. For the higher two bands, differently from
the resonant path of the lower band by the folded path explained
previously, they are originated by mutual coupling between two
layers. DCS band is determined by the length and width, L W,
of the patch, as for the outer dimension of the patch in the lower
band of [4]. Bluetooth band starts from the feed point, transfers
to the upper layer patch (p2) by mutual coupling between p3 and
p2, and then returns down to the lower layer plates, p4 and p5,
through the corresponding via holes v1 and v2. The movement
along the positive direction in the position of v1 and v2 results
to the enhancement of the third band in frequency by the shorter
paths.
Experimental results are provided in Fig. 2, where triple op-
eration of GSM/DCS/Bluetooth can be observed. Comparison Fig. 3. GSM Radiation Pattern. (a) xy plane. (b) yz plane. (c) zx plane.
with the HFSS simulations [10] reveals that the simulations
approximately predict the resonant frequencies and degree of the ohmic losses of FR4 substrate. The measured bandwidths
match except for impedance bandwidth of the GSM band. It are satisfied with the specifications of the triple bands, included
is believed that the larger measured bandwidth may be due to in Fig. 2. The available bandwidth and match condition can be
20 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 5, 2006

Fig. 4. DCS Radiation Pattern. (a) xy plane. (b) yz plane. (c) zx plane. Fig. 5. Bluetooth Radiation Pattern. (a) xy plane. (b) yz plane. (c) zx plane.

controlled by the geometrical parameters of embedded slots and is compact and does not require any complicated manufacturing
via holes. The present configuration provides a compromise be- process compared to conventional multiband PIFAs cited in lit-
tween size reduction and available bandwidth. The folded PIFA eratures. Note that the patch structure is symmetric to the
KWAK et al.: FOLDED PIFA FOR TRIPLE-BAND APPLICATION
plane. The intentional small discrepancies of the symmetry can
enhance the more improved bandwidth by the minor difference
in the resonant frequencies of the same band. For example, one
of the effects for the Bluetooth band can be difference in size
between p4 and p5 by taking the different length of s4 and s5.
The proposed antenna achieved a dimension of
12 30 7 only, which is a very compact antenna
compared to conventional PIFAs. The simulated and measured
radiation patterns at the resonant frequencies of 890, 1800, and
2400 MHz are plotted together in Figs. 3–5. The measured and
calculated results agree well with each other. However, the
measured radiation pattern of plane for Bluetooth band has
a little difference between two data. It is believed that this is
due to the measurement cable and dielectric losses. At the
plane, maximum gain is 1.47, 2.05, and 2.37 dBi for 890, 1800,
and 2400 MHz, respectively.
III. CONCLUSION
We have presented a novel folded PIFA for GSM/DCS/Blue-
tooth applications. By incorporating the use of embedded
slots and via holes, the proposed antenna design can give us
the required antenna performance with reduced real estate in
dimension. We show that the proposed techniques have several
strengths of small size (30 12 7 ), good efficiency, and
21
triple-band operation. It is expected that, by more meandering
and folding the top patch, the antenna size be reduced further.
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