2017 International Conference on Engineering Technology and Technopreneurship (ICE2T)

Proc. of the International Conference on Engineering Technologies and Technopreneurship (ICE2T 2017)
18-20 September 2017, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Planar Inverted-F Antenna (PIFA) Design for

Millimeter Wave Application
H. M. R. Nurul#1, Z.Mansor#2, M. K. A. Rahim*3
#
Communication Technology Section,
Universiti Kuala Lumpur British Malaysian Institute,
Batu 8, Jalan Sungai Pusu,
53100 Gombak, Selangor.
1
husna.rais@s.unikl.edu.my, 2zuhanis@unikl.edu.my,
*
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM JB 81310 Skudai, Johor.
3
mkamal@fke.utm.my

Abstract—This paper presented the analysis and
characterization of a single planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA)
operating with 28 GHz frequency. The PIFA design is extended to
dual element Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna.
PIFA design is used as it is one of the most promising antenna types
because it is small and has a low profile, making it suitable for
mounting in mobile devices. Computer Simulation Technology
(CST) software is used to design the proposed antenna.
.Keywords—millimeter wave; 5G viewless communication;
multiple input multiple output (MIMO) ; planar inverted-F antenna
(PIFA).
I. INTRODUCTION
Development of mobile network technology, rapidly
growth and now the world are looking towards 5th generation
(5G). The incoming evolution of communication technology,
5G is able to fulfill the high demand of the network capacity.
Higher frequency is able to carry high data rate as investigated
in [1]. 5G is capable to serve the data rate up to 10 GB/s for static
users, 1 GB/s for mobility users and not less than 100 Mb/s in
urban areas.
Compared to the 4G standards, which called as International
Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (IMT-Advance) serve a
data rate of 1 GB/s for low mobility communications and 100
Mbps for high mobility communications. There are three main
differences of 5G compared to 4G. 5G technology have much
greater service allocations at untapped mm-wave portions of the
coverage area and at the same time have lower infrastructure
cost. Furthermore, 5G also has the higher aggregate capacity for
many simultaneous users in both licensed and unlicensed
spectrum such as the convergence of Wi-Fi and cellular [2].
The allocated frequency for millimeter wave proposed by
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is 27.5 - 28.35
GHz [3]. Researchers mainly use 28 GHz as the frequency of
operation for the antenna design defined in [4-6]. There are three
potential applications of millimeter wave communication for 5G
network which are the cellular access, the small cell access, and
the wireless backhaul. The 5G wireless network use millimeter
wave carrier frequencies that permit larger bandwidth
allocations which increase the data transfer rate [7]. Millimeter
wave frequencies are able to handle much larger capacity than
today’s 4G and handle link between base station to devices, as
well as links between base stations due to much smaller
bandwidth.
In order to achieve higher data rate, the wireless device such
as mobile phone is needed to employ MIMO antenna [8]. MIMO
antenna have high Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) resulted high
data rate compared to single element antenna [9].
PIFA has appeared as one of the most pledge candidates in
the category of low profile antennas and is widely used for
mobile communication [10]. Planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA)
is an extended design from linear inverted-F antenna (IFA)
where the wire radiator element of IFA is replaced by a plate to
enhance bandwidth performance. PIFA has a low profile, small
size and can suit in a mobile phone [11]. The feeding mechanism
for PIFA design is coaxial probe where the feeding is inserted
on the top of the radiating patch.
The outline of this paper is as follows. Section I discusses
the introduction of 5G technology, millimeter wave and PIFA.
Section II presents the design methodology of the single element
PIFA design and MIMO PIFA design. Section III elaborate the
results and discussion of this work. Parametric analysis of the
proposed design also can be find in Section III. The last section,
section IV is the conclusion of this paper.
The objectives of this work are explained as below
i) To propose a single PIFA for 28 GHz frequency.
ii) To produce MIMO design by extending the single
PIFA design.
iii) Investigate the mutual coupling of MIMO PIFA.
This work achieves the objectives as can be seen from the
results. The single PIFA produce large bandwidth covering the
desired 28 GHz frequency and the design can be extended to be
MIMO PIFA. Investigation of mutual coupling can be seen from
the comparison of the S21 results.

978-1-53861807-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

 2017 International Conference on Engineering Technology and Technopreneurship (ICE2T)

II. DESIGN METHOLOGY

A. Single Element PIFA Design
The proposed planar inverted-F antenna as shown in Fig. 1
consist of the radiating patch, shorting plate and ground plane.
The material used for the radiating element is copper. The
dimension of the radiating patch is L1 and L2 and the ground
plane is Lg×Wg . The radiating patch place on top of the ground
plane with gap h. The gap between the patch and the ground
plane, h is filled with air substrate with permittivity, 𝜀𝑟 = 1.
Low permittivity substrate can enhance the antenna
efficiency and gain [12]. The shorting plate is used to connect
the antenna patch and ground plane. In the simulation, the 50 Ω
discrete ports are used to feed in the bottom line of the
rectangular patch. The distance of the feeding position to the
shorting plate is 0.47 mm.
B. PIFA Design Calculation
Equation (1) shows that the resonant frequency is inversely
proportional to the patch length. The length of the patch can be
calculated using formula (2) and (3). The following formulas
were implemented in designing the proposed antenna. The
calculated value used as a preliminary dimension of the patch.
Frequency of operation, f used in the calculation 1s 28 GHz as
presented in [13-14]
𝑐 the single element which is 5 mm. The second radiating patch
𝑓= (1)
4(𝐿1 + 𝐿2 )
𝛾𝑑 1 𝑐 (2)
𝐿1 ≈ =
4 4 𝑓√𝜀𝑟
𝑐
𝑓= (4)
4(𝐿1 + 𝐿2 )
c = free space ve;ocity og ight 3× 108 m/s
f = frequency of operation
(𝐿1 + 𝐿2 ) = 𝑥
𝑥 = total length
𝑐 3 × 108
𝑥= = = 2.67 𝑚𝑚
4𝑓 4(28 𝐺𝐻𝑧)
(𝐿1 + 𝐿2 ) = 2.67 𝑚𝑚 𝐿1 ≈ 𝐿2 ≈ 1.34 𝑚𝑚
The patch length and width are optimized by several
simulations to 2 mm and 1.2 mm respectively. The size of the
ground plan Lg and Wg is 5 mm × 1.5 mm respectively.
Equation (1) to (3) showed that the total of the radiating patch
length and width has to be quarter wavelength (λ/4).
C. MIMO PIFA Design
The single element PIFA design is extended to be two
elements PIFA as shown in Fig. 2. Table 1 shows the dimension
of the single element PIFA and MIMO PIFA. The width of the
ground plane is extended to 10 mm while the length of the
ground plane is similar with the length of the ground plane for
is located at the edge of the ground plane. The dimension of the
radiating patch for the MIMO design optimized to 1.25 × 1.72
mm. Referring to the calculation of the distance between the
two elements, which is half wavelength (𝜆/2) calculation as
follows:

(3) 𝜆 0.011
𝑐 2 𝐷= = = 5 𝑚𝑚
𝐿2 = √ 2 2
4𝑓 𝜀𝑟+1

After several optimizations the gap optimized to 7.5 mm and

The equation in (4) is used to find the total length [15]. The width of the ground plane became 10 mm.
length and width, L1 and L2 of the patch that can be calculated
as:

Wg 10 mm
Shorting plate
L1 L2 PIFA 2
Ground plane
Radiating patch
h 7.5 mm
Lg
PIFA 1
5 mm
Discrete port

Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed PIFA Fig. 2. Geometry of MIMO PIFA Design
 2017 International Conference on Engineering Technology and Technopreneurship (ICE2T)

TABLE I. DIMENSIONS OF PROPOSED ANTENNA Gain of the MIMO PIFA increase 1.65 dB compared to the
Antenna single element PIFA design.
Parameters
Single PIFA MIMO PIFA
L1×L2 2 mm × 1.2 mm 1.25 × 1.72 mm

Lg×Wg. 5 mm × 1.5 mm 5 mm × 10 mm

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

A. Simulatinon results of Single Element PIFA
The simulated return loss of the proposed antenna is shown
in Fig. 3. From the result, it can be seen that the antenna operates
well within 28 GHz frequency. The proposed antenna exhibit
large bandwidth up to 2.68 GHz (26.79 – 29.47 GHz). Fig. 4
represent the simulated far-field pattern for the proposed antenna Fig. 5. Simulated Scattering Parameter for the two element PIFA.
in the 3D view. It can be seen that the proposed antenna
produced almost omnidirectional radiation pattern. The far-field
pattern showed upward radiation with 3.2 dB gain. C. Parametric Analysis of MIMO PIFA.
i. Gap Distance between Radiating Patch

The length of the gap between the radiating patch of PIFA

1 and PIFA 2 is analyzed by changing the ground plane length.
Decreasing the length of the ground plane will reduce the gap
between PIFA 1 and PIFA 2. Recent research in [16, 117
claimed that if two antennae closed to each other will produce
mutual coupling and degrading the antenna performance.

Fig. 3. Smulated S11(dB) of the proposed single element PIFA at 28 GHz.

(a) Far-field pattern for Port 1

Fig. 4. Simulate far-field pattern of single element PIFA in 3D.

B. Simulation Results for MIMO PIFA Design

Fig. 5 shows the simulated scattering parameter of the
MIMO PIFA design. From the results of S11 and S22, it was
found that each element maintained almost similar bandwidth,
around 3.2 GHz. S21 result of the design shows good result with
minimum isolation -17 dB between PIFA 1 and PIFA 2. As
shown in Fig. 6, far-field pattern for PIFA 1and PIFA 2 shows
upward radiation and resulted 4.85 dB gain.
(b) Far-field pattern for Port 2
Fig. 6. Far-field pattern of MIMO PIFA design.
Fig. 7 shows the isolation S21 curves versus frequency for
different gap length. From the S-parameter results at 28 GHz It
can be seen that the isolation reach to the maximum which is -
 2017 International Conference on Engineering Technology and Technopreneurship (ICE2T)

12 dB for 3.5 mm gap length. The analysis showed that the

mutual coupling increase resulted from the closer gap of the
radiating patch for PIFA 1 and PIFA 2.

ii. Orienttion of Radiating Patch

The two-element MIMO PIFA design also investigated in a

different orientation of the radiating patch. Design for MIMO
Rotate PIFA shown in Fig. 8. The orientation of PIFA 1
remains with portrait position similar with design in part C of
Section II while the orientation of PIFA 2 was changed to
landscape position to investigate the effect of the antenna Fig. 9. Simulated S-parameter for MIMO Rotate PIFA with potrait and
isolation. The simulated S-parameter in Fig. 9 shows that even landscape position radiating patch.
with different position of PIFA 2, the antenna maintains the 28
GHz operating frequency with 3.66 GHz bandwidth. Fig. 10
presents the 3D far-field pattern of the MIMO Rotate PIFA.

Comparison of S21 for MIMO PIFA design with both

radiating patch element in portrait position and MIMO Rotate
PIFA design with portrait position and landscape position of the
radiating element presented in Fig. 11. Based on the result
shows that MIMO PIFA with the similar orientation of radiating
patch has minimum isolation which is -18 dB. Isolation for
MIMO Rotate PIFA with landscape position of PIFA 2 resulted
-17 dB. Although the difference I s only 1dB, the result shows
that in order to obtain high isolation among antenna elements,
the strongest radiation of the element should not be oriented to
the nearest element or other elements [18]. (a) Far-field pattern for Port 1

Fig. 7. Simulated Scattering Parameter for the two element PIFA.

(b) Far-field pattern for Port 2

Fig. 10. Far-field pattern of MIMO Rotate PIFA design.
PIFA 2- Landscape position

TABLE 2. DIMENSIONS OF PROPOSED ANTENNA

PIFA 1 – Portrait position
Proposed Antenna
Parameters Single MIMO MIMO Rotate PIFA
PIFA PIFA PIFA 1 PIFA 2
Fig. 8. MIMO Rotate PIFA with potrait and landscape position radiating Gain 3.20 dB 4.85 dB 4.76 dB 4.90 dB
patch.
Directivity 3.31 dBi 4.93 dBi 4.86 dBi 4.69 dBi
 2017 International Conference on Engineering Technology and Technopreneurship (ICE2T)

[7] Miss. Ankita P. Manekar, Dr. S. W. Varade, ““Design and Simulation of

Fig. 11. Comparison S21 results.
Table 2 summarizes the gain of single PIFA, MIMO
PIFA and MIMO rotate PIFA. The gain shows increases from
3.20 for single PIFA to 4.85 dB MIMO PIFA. However, gain
for MIMO rotate PIFA is lower than MIMO PIFA which is 4.76
dB as a result of mutual copling for MIMO rotate PIFA is
higher than MIMO PIFA.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
Objectives of this work have been achieved. From the
analysis of the design, it can be seen that PIFA concept is
suitable for MIMO design. Only a few adjustment has to be done
to the radiating patch dimension when employing MIMO
design. In addition, different orientation of the radiating patch
can be employed and analyzed to justify the best position. From
the analysis, it can be concluded that the same position of
radiating patch resulted a better result.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Nurul Husna would like to thank the Majlis Amanah Rakyat
(MARA) and Universiti Kuala Lumpur British Malaysian
Institute for her postgraduate scholarship and the supervision
of laboratory facilities.
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