A Single-Feed Dual Band PIFA With

U-Shape And non U-Shaped Slots

Sripathi Yarasi*, Blake Winter and Ted Hebron

Centurion Wireless Technologies Inc., 3425 N 44th Street, Lincoln, NE 68504, USA

PIFAs (Planar Inverted F-Antennas) are considered as internal antennas which have the
desirable features of compactness, moderate range of band-width, higher gain in principal
planes for both states of polarization, are less prone for breakage, and reduced power
absorption with the user as compared to external antennas. In addition to cellular
applications, PIFAs have become attractive candidates in a variety of commercial
applications such as Blue-tooth and mobile satellite communications. In this paper, a new
single feed dual band PIFA design is proposed. This PIFA exhibits GPS (1575 MHz) and
WCDMA RX (2110 – 2170 MHz) frequency bands, which is of special interest for 3G
communications.

Figure 1 shows the geometry of the proposed PIFA: a wide U-shaped slot is cut at the
center of the PIFA, a second slot was introduced adjacent to the U-Shaped slot, the feed
and shorting pins were placed at the center of the U-shaped slot, and a shorting wall was
placed at the edge of the PIFA. Figure 2 shows the VSWR plot of dual band PIFA as a
result of this geometry, its VSWR < 2.5:1. The tuning of the dual band antenna was
obtained by adjusting the length of the non-U shaped slot. This is due to the fact that
there are currents along the edge of the U-shaped slot, so the introduction of an open slot
along the edge of the U-shaped slot, produces the required frequency response
characteristic. While the isolation between two bands was well controlled by the shorting
wall position, the impedance matching was obtained by optimizing the position of feed
and shorting pins within the U-shaped slot. The detailed design parameters and its effect
on the performance of the PIFA will be presented in the meeting. When tested for free
space radiation pattern, this PIFA was mixed polarized and the peak gain of the total field
is > 3.0 dBi in WCDMA RX band. Although this PIFA works for GPS and WCDMA RX
bands, this design concept can be extended to other frequency bands of interest.
H2 S 11 SWR 1 / REF 1 1_: 1.9815

1 575.000 000 MHz

2_: 2.1232
2.11 GHz
3_: 2.2671
2.17 GHz

Rm

Figure 1. Geometry of the 1

proposed PIFA design 2

3

START 1 200.000 000 MHz STOP 2 600.000 000 MHz

Figure 2. VSWR plot of the proposed PIFA

 TITLE: A Single-Feed Dual Band PIFA With U-Shape
And Non U-Shaped Slots
AUTHORS: Sripathi Yarasi*, Blake Winter and Ted Hebron
Centurion Wireless Technologies Inc., 3425 N 44th Street, Lincoln, NE 68504, USA

IDENTIFICATION OF COMMISION: Commission B

SESSION TOPIC: B.1.2 – Antennas for Wireless Communication

Contributions of this Paper:

1. Slot Loading Technique: Although U-shaped slots are recently available in

open literature in micro-strip antennas, it is not openly available in the literature
of the PIFA. The U-slot, have become very attractive in micro-strip antennas
because their introduction made micro-strip antenna’s band-width wider which
otherwise has a narrow band-width. In this paper not only is the concept of U-slot
to PIFAs used, but also introduced is another slot adjacent to the U-shaped slot.
While the U-shaped slot is enclosed within the radiator, the non-U shaped slot is
cut open at one end of the radiator. The introduction of an open slot adjacent to
U-slot reduces the frequency, particularly of the higher band drastically. This is
due to the fact that there are currents flowing at the edge of the U-shaped slot,
therefore a capacitive loaded slot reduces the frequency and thus the antenna
dimensions drastically. Unlike micro-strip antennas that are conventionally made
of half wavelength dimensions, PIFAs are made of just quarter-wavelength.

2. Impedance Matching: The impedance matching of the dual band is obtained by

positioning of the single feed and the shorting pin within the U-shaped slot, and
by optimizing the space between feed and shorting pins. A shorting wall, which
is placed at the edge of this PIFA, controls the isolation/separation between the
two bands. Thus this antenna design has all tools (shorting pin, shorting wall,
slots) within itself to adjust the frequency response characteristic, and to create a
dual band by using a single feed pin. This antenna design doesn’t require any
extra electronic components matching network and thus avoid any losses due to
that. Although this antenna was designed for GPS and WCDMA RX dual bands,
this design concept can be extended for any other frequency bands of interest.

3. Gain: One of the attractive advantages of the PIFA is that it exhibits moderate to
high gain in both vertical and horizontal states of polarization. This feature is
very useful in certain wireless communications where the antenna orientation is
not fixed and the reflections are present from the different corners of the
environment. In those cases, the important parameter to be considered is the total
field that is the vector sum of horizontal and vertical states of polarization. The
antenna proposed in this paper is dual polarized and its total field peak gain is
greater than 3.0 dBi in WCDMA RX band.
Relationship of this paper to previous work:

One paper was presented in the last APS Symposium titled Dual-Band and Wide-Band
PIFA with U- and Meanderline-Shaped Slots [1]. In that paper, the effect of U-shaped
slot on PIFA was discussed the same way in which the effect of U-shaped slot in micro-
strip antennas was discussed [2]. In this paper, in addition to U-slot, the effect of a
second slot and a second shorting pin (which is called here as `shorting wall’) is also
discussed. Also, the resonant frequencies in this paper and the control of separation
between two bands are quite different from the paper [1].

[1] Pekka Salonen*, Mikko Keskilammi, Markku Kivikoski, “Dual-Band and Wide-Band
PIFA with U- and Meanderline-Shaped Slots”, IEEE APS Symposium, Vol. 2, Session
35, pp. 116- 119, Boston, MA, July 2001.

[2] T. Huynh and K.F. lee, “ Single layer single patch wideband microstrip antenna”,
Electronics Letters, Vol. 31, No. 16, pp.1310-12, August 1995.