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October 2017
Vol. 60 • No. 10
Founded in 1958
October 2017 Microwave Journal Passive and Control Components Vol. 60 • No. 10
Cover Feature
Invited Paper
Antenna-Less Wireless:
A Marriage Between Antenna
and Microwave Engineering
J. Anguera, A. Andújar and C. Puente
Fractus Antennas, Sant Cugat del Vallés, Barcelona, Spain
F
or many decades, antenna ized, miniature component called of frequency bands (e.g., 698 to
and microwave engineer- antenna booster. Being surface- 2690 MHz) with a single part num-
ing have been adjacent yet mount and chip-like in nature, the ber. Moreover, their manufacturing
fairly separate disciplines. antenna booster fits seamlessly in is based on conventional low-cost
Both have experienced such a an electronic printed circuit board, materials (e.g., epoxy-glass sub-
high degree of specialization and the same way any other electronic strates or stamped-on-plastics as-
sophistication that experts in one component does, such as a micro- semblies), making this off-the-shelf
area would rarely dispute the ex- processor, memory, amplifier, fil- solution potentially low-cost at very
pertise of someone in the other. ter or switch. It can be assembled large production volumes.
While microwave engineers have with a conventional pick-and-place An illustration of the radical
largely focused on taming the ra- machine, making the design and change that the antenna-less tech-
dio waves through all sorts of active manufacture of the next generation nology means for the design of a
(amplifiers, oscillators, active tuners, of IoT/mobile or wireless devices new generation of mobile/IoT de-
etc.) and passive (filters, couplers, simpler, faster and more effective. vices is shown in Figure 1. From
splitters, etc.) devices, antenna en- Miniature chip antennas have the old stubby, external monopole/
gineers have been exploring new been available to antenna and mi- dipole antennas in early phones to
and creative ways to free the waves crowave engineers for decades, so the newest antenna boosters, an-
through increasingly complex frac- what is so radically different about tenna technology has experienced
tal-based and related antenna ge- these new antenna boosters that a tremendous evolution in a race for
ometries. However this divide may make them worth paying some at- increasing the number of frequency
radically change with the introduc- tention to? The radical innovation bands within an always decreasing
tion of “antenna-less” technology, is their multiband capability. While component size.
a technology which makes antenna conventional miniature chip anten- Both the challenges of increasing
design much more similar to filter nas were based on high-permittivity the number of bands and reduc-
design than to conventional anten- ceramics and delivered adequate ing the antenna space have always
na engineering. performance for narrowband, single been met with the mantra that ev-
Antenna-less technology is frequency applications (e.g., Blue- ery antenna engineer knows: “one
based on replacing a complex and tooth and GPS), the new antenna- antenna size, one wavelength.”
usually customized antenna design less boosters can deliver full mobile Despite the progress of antenna
with an off-the-shelf, standard- performance within a broad range technology in providing more and
CoverFeature
Low Noise Reference
Oscillators For Your Volume
Device Volume + 90 mm Height
High Frequency Apps.
10,000 mm3
7,000 mm3
3,500 mm3
Ground Plane
Booster Antenna
Technology
125 mm3
Notes:
1. DC Supply required: +5V, 5mA Typ.
2. Typical and nominal leakage levels
for input up to 1W CW.
3. Threshold level is the input power
level when output power is 1dB
compressed.
VSWR
Efficiency
stalled as any other chip antenna, 3.0 40
it actually behaved as a booster 2.0 20
by injecting radiation currents on
1.0 0
a ground-plane about the size of 0.90 1.20 1.50 1.80 2.10
a typical mobile device such as a Frequency (GHz)
smartphone. The actual location
of the antenna booster depends s Fig. 4 VSWR and antenna efficiency
including mismatch losses for the five
on the dimensions of the ground- band, single-port mobile antenna shown
plane. In this particular example, the in Figure 3.
corner is the preferred location. The
location of the antenna booster with
respect to the ground-plane plays
an important role in determining
the efficiency of the whole radiating
system. Once the preferred loca-
tion is selected, the next step is to
provide impedance matching. This
two-step process will ensure that
the antenna system radiates and re-
ceives electromagnetic waves with
optimum total efficiency.
As mentioned, because the na-
ture of a ground-plane booster is
reactive, a multiband matching net-
work is required to simultaneously
match both frequency regions (824
to 960 MHz and 1710 to 2170 MHz).
Such a design is not as straightfor-
ward as a single band matching
network, where an L-type or pi-type
circuit is generally sufficient. In this
particular case, a matching network
of six lumped components was de-
signed. The target criteria for this
design procedure was how much s Fig. 5 A three-port mobile platform
power from a generator was deliv- covering the whole set of bands from
698 to 2690 MHz, using four identical
ered to the ground-plane booster, antenna boosters.
VSWR
boosters to increase the overall an- 3.0 40
tenna radiation efficiency including VSWR
mismatch losses at the most chal- 2.0 20
TRP (dBm)
27.5
MHz, better efficiency from 1710 to 27.0
2170 MHz and more balanced effi- 26.5
ciency from 2500 to 2590 MHz, as 26.0
GSM850 GSM900
Figure 7b illustrates. Moreover, ow- 25.5
128 189 251 975 37 124
ing to the larger bandwidth made Channel
(a)
available by the booster-ground-
plane combination, an additional 27.0
TRP Original Antenna
frequency band (LTE2300: 2300 to 26.5
TRP Antenna Booster
2400 MHz) that was not featured in
TRP (dBm)
26.0
the original smartphone is enabled 25.5
by the alternative antenna-less so- 25.0
lution. Beyond the passive test, a 24.5
GSM1800 GSM1900
24.0
512 698 885 512 661 810
Channel
(b)
–80
TIS Original
–85 Antenna
TIS (dBm)
–90
TIS Antenna
–95 Booster
–100
(a) –105
GSM850 GSM900
–110
60 128 189 251 975 37 124
Total Efficiency (%)
10
–104
0
1.0 1.4 1.8 2.2 2.6 3.0 –106
Frequency (GHz)
(b) –108
GSM1800 GSM1900
–110
512 698 885 512 661 810
s Fig. 7 A 12 mm × 3 mm × 2.4 mm
Channel
antenna booster mounted on a corner (d)
of the smartphone PCB (a), enabling
a comparison of the overall antenna s Fig. 8 Comparison of the booster-
efficiency of the booster-based antenna based antenna with the original PIFA
with the smartphone’s original PIFA antenna: TRP at LFR (a) and HFR (b) and
antenna (b). TIS at LFR (c) and HFR (d).
GSM900
–50 –50
–60 –60
RSSI (dBm)
RSSI (dBm)
–70 –70
–80 –80
–90 –90
–100 –100 RSSI Average = –63.4 dBm
RSSI Average = –64.0 dBm
–110 –110
Distance Samples Distance Samples
(a) (c)
UMTS
–40 –40
RSSI Average = –81.6 dBm RSSI Average = –75.4 dBm
–60 –60
RSSI (dBm)
RSSI (dBm)
–80 –80
–100 –100
–120 –120
Distance Samples Distance Samples
(b) (d)
s Fig. 9 Objective field test results comparing the original PIFA antenna and the
antenna-less system: the original antenna operating at GSM900 (a) and UMTS (b) and
the antenna booster at GSM900 (c) and UMTS (d).
Power Amplifiers with the antenna-less solution was able to agation, Vol. 59, No. 5, May 2011,
pp. 1668-1677.
match or improve the performance
Integrated Isolator
3. J. Anguera, A. Andújar and C. Pu-
of the original conventional antenna ente, “Wireless Handheld Devices,
in the commercial smartphone. This Radiation Systems and Manu-
18-20 GHz 2W and 4W P1dB indicates that not only is the antenna- facturing Methods,” Pat. WO
Open and Short Protection less system capable of matching the 2014/012842 A1, July 16, 2012.
passive performance of a convention- 4. J. Anguera, A. Andújar, C. Puente
Compact Size al and much larger PIFA antenna, it is and J. Mumbrú, “Antenna-less Wire-
Competitive Price & Fast Delivery also able to deliver adequate perfor- less Device”, Pat. WO 2010/015365
mance in real world active wireless or A2, August 4, 2008.
mobile platforms. 5. H. A. Wheeler, “Fundamental Limi-
tations of Small Antennas,” Pro-
CONCLUSION ceedings of the I.R.E., 35, Decem-
ber 1947, pp. 1479-1484.
Antenna-less wireless architec- 6. A. Andújar and J. Anguera, “CUBE
ture provides a new set of tools mXTEND™ (FR01-S4-250)—A Stan-
and methods for approaching the dard Antenna Solution for Mobile
design of a wireless/mobile device. Frequency Bands,” User Manual,
Antenna and microwave engineer- Fractus Antennas, June 2017, www.
ing merge in this new technology fractusantennas.com/wp-content/
LNA with 5W Protection to deliver a fast, simple and effec-
tive design architecture. Owing to
uploads/2017/06/UM_FR01-
S4-250.pdf.
Broadband Performance to 20 GHz the standardization of the antenna 7. J. Anguera, A. Andújar, R. Mateos
and S. Kahng, “A 4 x 4 MIMO Mul-
Low Noise Figure part using the new class of miniature tiband Antenna System with Non-
Medium Power up to 1W SMD antenna boosters, antenna- Resonant Elements for Smartphone
microwave engineers can design an Platforms,” EuCAP Conference,
Hermetic Housing Option
antenna system via a process that is March 23, 2017.
fast, flexible, modular and very simi- 8. A. Andújar, J. Anguera and Y. Cobo,
lar to a filter design. No more cum- “Distributed Systems Robust to
bersome mechanical customization Hand Loading based on Non-Res-
is needed. Additionally, because onant Elements,” Microwave and
the booster component is fixed, a Optical Technology Letters, Vol. 55,
No. 10, pp. 2307-2317, October
potential low-cost solution can be
2013.
obtained through economies of 9. CTIA Test Plan for Wireless Device
scale. Over-the-Air Performance, Version
The experiments and extensive 3.6, June 2016.
results show that despite the savings
in cost and volume in the device,
984-228-8001 the performance of an antenna-less
www.agilemwt.com system matches that of a conven-
tional one. While the volume of the
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36 MICROWAVE JOURNAL OCTOBER 2017