548 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

13, 2014

Small-Size Octaband Monopole Antenna in an

LTE/WWAN Mobile Phone
Jui-Han Lu, Senior Member, IEEE, and Jia-Ling Guo, Student Member, IEEE

Abstract—This letter proposes a small-size printed antenna

with multiband WWAN/LTE operation in a mobile phone by
introducing a novel loop parasitic shorted strip and a C-shaped
ground plane. The obtained impedance bandwidths across LTE
and WWAN operating bands approach 277 and 1176 MHz, re-
spectively. The proposed printed monopole antenna reduces the
antenna size by at least 22% since the overall antenna size is
only 35 10 0.8 mm . The measured peak gains and antenna
efficiencies are approximately 2.2/3.1 dBi and 76%/82% for the
LTE/WWAN bands, respectively.
Index Terms—LTE, monopole antenna, shorted strip, specific
absorption rate (SAR).

I. INTRODUCTION

T HE LONG Term Evolution (LTE) system with LTE700

(698–787 MHz), LTE2300 (2300–2400 MHz), and
LTE2500 (2500–2690 MHz) operating bands [1] has greatly
attracted attention for use in 4G wireless wide area net-
work (WWAN) systems to incorporate the LTE system with
GSM/UMTS operations in mobile devices because of signif-
icantly higher data rate than that of 3G WWAN operations
for mobile broadband services. However, the physical dis-
tance from other embedded antennas (e.g., GPS, WLAN, and
Bluetooth antennas) diminishes since an internal LTE/WWAN
antenna occupies a large amount of space. Meanwhile, to fulfill
the bandwidth specifications of the 4G system and ensure
the ability to embed into a limited space, compact multiband
antennas appear to be the optimal candidate for providing com-
mercial broadband coverage in the 698–960/1710–2690-MHz
bands in LTE/WWAN environments. Several planar in-
ternal mobile phone antennas (MAs) have been presented
for LTE/WWAN operation [2]–[22]. However, limitations
include a larger antenna size for the above MAs with a greater
planar dimension [2]–[14] or insufficient operating band-
width [14]–[22]. Moreover, slim profile has been a trend for the
handsets, especially for the smartphones, by accommodating
the battery inside the rectangular notch of the system circuit
board to decrease the total required thickness of the handset.
Manuscript received January 05, 2014; revised February 20, 2014; accepted
March 10, 2014. Date of publication March 13, 2014; date of current version
April 02, 2014. This work was supported by the National Science Council
(NSC), Taiwan, under Grant NSC101-2221-E-022-011-MY2.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Communication En-
gineering, National Kaohsiung Marine University, Kaohsiung 811, Taiwan
(e-mail: jhlu@webmail.nkmu.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2311797
Fig. 1. Geometry and photograph of the proposed small-size printed antenna
for slim mobile phone application.
Thus, in this letter, a C-shaped ground plane is introduced
to enhance the operating bandwidth of an antenna disposed
on the shaped system circuit board, which is larger than
that disposed on the traditional simple system circuit board.
Then, this letter proposes a novel loop shorted strip as the
parasitic element to generate dual 0.25-wavelength resonant
modes at approximately 750/940-MHz bands to cover the
LTE700/GSM850/900 operating bandwidth. Next, an F-shaped
driven monopole strip is devised to excite a resonant mode
in the upper (1710–2690 MHz) band of the desired antenna.
Meanwhile, in contrast with the schemes presented in [2]–[22],
all monopole strips in this letter have the same width (0.6 mm)
to simplify the dimensional parameters and minimize manufac-
turing defects. As for the overall antenna volume, the proposed
monopole antenna with a small size of 35 10 0.8 mm
(280 mm ) has an antenna size at least 22% less than that of
the smallest internal mobile phone antenna with a dimension
of 30 15 0.8 mm [6] for the LTE/WWAN operations.
Therefore, the proposed design is more feasible for embed-
ding into a mobile phone. Moreover, the specific absorption
rate (SAR) [23] for the internal antenna must be tested and
should be less than 1.6 W/kg for 1-g tissue [24], [25]. To
comply with this requirement, simulated SAR results of the
proposed small-size monopole antenna are also analyzed.
II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION AND DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
The geometrical configuration and photograph of the pro-
posed small-size printed antenna is illustrated in Fig. 1. In this

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LU AND GUO: SMALL-SIZE OCTABAND MONOPOLE ANTENNA IN LTE/WWAN MOBILE PHONE
Fig. 2. Simulated and measured results against frequency for the case with the
simple rectangular ground plane, the case with the display, and the proposed
design.
study, to make it more promising for practical slim handset
application, a battery is embedded into the square notch with
the size of 40 40 mm and connected at proper positions to
the ground plane of the C-shaped circuit board. While printed
on the same side of an FR4 substrate with the dimension of
35 10 0.8 mm , the antenna is mounted along the bottom
left edge of the C-shaped system ground with the dimension of
115 60 0.8 mm . Meanwhile, to minimize manufacturing
defects and simplify the dimensional parameters, all monopole
strips in this study have the same width (0.6 mm), which is
simpler than those presented in [2]–[22]. The proposed antenna
consists of an F-shaped driven monopole and a loop parasitic
strip shorted at point E. A 50- mini coaxial line is utilized
to connect at the feeding point (point A) of the F-shaped
driven monopole and the system grounding point (point B).
The F-shaped driven strip is first arranged as a quarter-wave-
length monopole to generate the fundamental resonant mode
at approximately 2085 MHz. Then, the lower meandered arm
(section EKJG) of the loop parasitic shorted strip contributes to
its quarter-wavelength resonant mode at around 793 MHz with
a higher-order resonant mode at approximately 1580 MHz.
Moreover, to enhance the impedance bandwidth of the lower
and higher bands, the upper meandered arm (section EHIF)
of loop parasitic shorted strip is utilized to generate 956- and
2658-MHz bands, which are the fundamental (0.25-wave-
length) resonant mode and its higher-order resonant mode,
respectively. Additionally, based on the above guidelines, the
proposed MA is optimized by using Ansoft HFSS, a commer-
cially available software package based on the finite element
method [26]. Fig. 1 displays the design parameter values
obtained by the above strategy.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Fig. 2 summarizes the simulation and experimental results
for return loss in the proposed monopole antenna. The lower
and higher band reveal a measured 3:1 VSWR (6-dB return
loss) bandwidth of 277 MHz (691–968 MHz) and 1176 MHz
549
Fig. 3. Simulated surface current distributions on the major metal pattern of
the proposed small-size printed monopole antenna. (a) MHz. (b)
MHz. (c) MHz. (d) MHz. (e) MHz.
(f) MHz.
(1554–2730 MHz), respectively. Dual wide bands can comply
with the bandwidth requirements of the desired eight-band
LTE/WWAN (LTE700/GSM850/900/GSM1800/1900/UMTS/
LTE2300/2500) operations. Additionally, for the case with
the rectangular ground plane, the lower-band bandwidth is
small and far from covering the LTE700/GSM850/900 bands.
This behavior confirms that the first mode (742-MHz band) is
mainly affected by the ground plane structure, implying that
the surface current distributions along the portion adjacent
to the notch are strongly disturbed and shown in Fig. 3(a).
Moreover, as the display is arranged on the top of the pro-
posed internal antenna, we can find that the measured input
impedance of the lower band becomes worse. However, the
problem is easily solved by the loading effect of the plastic
mockup and by improving impedance matching with the active
network in practical commercial applications. Some variations
in the impedance matching of the higher band can be observed.
However, the operating bandwidth still fulfills the LTE/WWAN
system requirements.
Then, to more thoroughly elucidate the excitation of each
LTE/WWAN bands, Fig. 3 shows the simulated surface cur-
rent distributions on the C-shaped system ground, the F-shaped
driven monopole, and the loop parasitic shorted strip at typ-
ical frequencies. First, the surface current distribution from the
shorted point E to the end point P along the square notch’s edge
(section LMNO) of the C-shaped ground plane is excited at its
fundamental mode at 742 MHz with a 0.5-wavelength surface
current distribution. Then, in Fig. 3(b), the surface current at
793 MHz is distributed along the lower meandered arm (E
550 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 4. Comparison of the simulated input impedance for (a) the case without the upper monopole of the loop parasitic shorted strip (Antenna-1), (b) the case without
the upper-arm of the F-shaped driven monopole strip (Antenna-2), and (c) the case without the lower-arm of the F-shaped driven monopole strip (Antenna-3).

K J G) of the loop parasitic shorted strip, which is ex-

cited with a 0.25-wavelength surface current distribution having
a maximum strength at point E and decreasing to be generally
null at the end of the shorted strip (point G).
Next, the fundamental mode is excited at 956 MHz with max-
imum strength along the upper shorted strip (E H I F) of
the loop parasitic strip, as shown in Fig. 3(c). At the 1580-MHz
band, a null point is found along the lower meandered arm (sec-
tion EKJG) of the loop parasitic shorted strip. This observation
demonstrates that the first operating mode of the upper band
is the higher-order mode excited by the upper-arm meandered
shorted strip. Similarly, at the 2658-MHz band, a null point Fig. 5. Measured 3-D total-power radiation patterns for the proposed small-
is also found along the upper meandered arm (section EHIF) size printed multiband monopole antenna.
of the loop parasitic shorted strip, which excites the higher-
order mode as the third operating mode of the upper band. Fi-
nally, at 2085 MHz, a strong surface current on the F-shaped
driven monopole is observed, indicating that the second op-
erating mode of the upper band originates mainly from this
F-shaped driven monopole.
Furthermore, the operating principles of the proposed small-
size printed monopole antenna are examined. Fig. 4 compares
the simulated input impedance for various antenna structures
with the F-shaped coupled-fed or loop parasitic shorted strips.
For a case without the upper monopole (section HI) of the loop Fig. 6. Measured and simulated antenna gain and efficiency for the proposed
parasitic shorted strip (Antenna-1), the first resonant mode at small-size printed monopole antenna. (a) Low band. (b) High band.
742 MHz can be clearly excited with higher impedance to have
worse matching. It indicates that, by introducing a novel loop
in the parasitic shorted strip, better impedance matching in the azimuthal plane ( -plane), which is close to half-wavelength
lower operating band can be easily obtained. Additionally, ac- dipole-like patterns. On the other hand, at 1920 MHz in the
cording to our results of Fig. 4(b) and (c), the resonant mode higher band, since the operating wavelength is comparable to
at about 2058-MHz band cannot be easily excited only with the length of the system ground plane, more variations and dips
the upper arm (Antenna-2) or the lower arm (Antenna-3) of the can be observed in the radiation patterns, especially in the az-
F-shaped driven monopole. imuthal plane (top view and bottom view in this figure) due to
Fig. 5 illustrates the measured three-dimensional (3-D) total- the surface current nulls usually excited in the system ground
power radiation with three radiation patterns seen from the top, plane.
front, and side directions at typical frequencies of 740- and Fig. 6 presents the measured antenna gain and efficiency
1920-MHz bands. At 740 MHz in the antenna’s lower band, it (mismatching loss included [27]) for the proposed compact
is observed that the radiation patterns are omnidirectional in the multiband antenna. The simulation results are summarized
LU AND GUO: SMALL-SIZE OCTABAND MONOPOLE ANTENNA IN LTE/WWAN MOBILE PHONE
TABLE I
SIMULATED BODY SAR RESULTS OBTAINED USING SEMCAD X [28] FOR
1-g BODY TISSUE
in this figure for comparison to the measured ones. For fre-
quencies over the lower band, the measured antenna gain
and efficiency are approximately 0.8–2.2 dBi and 53%–76%,
respectively. Meanwhile, the gain for the higher band ranges
from approximately 1.5 to 3.1 dBi, while the antenna efficiency
is approximately 61%–82%. Furthermore, the near-field radia-
tion characteristics for the SAR [23] are tested to verify that the
proposed monopole antenna fulfills the requirements for mobile
device use. For 1-g head tissue, by providing the input power of
0.25 W (24 dBm) for 925-MHz bands and 0.125 W (21 dBm)
for 740-, 1795-, 1920-, and 2350-MHz bands, the SAR values
are obtained and listed in Table I. Meanwhile, the simulated
return loss at each testing frequency is also given in the table.
The obtained SAR values are all less than 1.6 W/kg [24], [25],
indicating that the antenna is promising for practical handset
applications.
IV. CONCLUSION
This letter presents a bandwidth enhancement approach
using a novel loop parasitic shorted strip and a C-shaped
system ground to achieve a small-size eight-band LTE/WWAN
internal mobile phone antenna. The impedance bandwidth
across LTE and WWAN bands can approach approximately
277 and 1176 MHz, respectively. The measured peak gains
and antenna efficiencies are approximately 2.2/3.1 dBi and
76%/82% for the LTE/WWAN bands, respectively. The pro-
posed small-size printed monopole antenna reduces the antenna
size by at least 22% since the overall antenna size is only
35 10 0.8 mm . Moreover, the proposed small-size printed
antenna design fulfills the requirement of the SAR ( W/kg
for 1-g tissue) for slim mobile phone use.
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