The 2014 International Workshop on Antenna Technology

Dual-Band VHF/UHF Smartphone Antenna for

Mobile Digital Television

Andrew R. Weily, Ken W. Smart and Trevor S. Bird

CSIRO Computational Informatics
Epping NSW 1710 Australia
Andrew.Weily@csiro.au

Abstract—A dual-band VHF/UHF antenna suitable for use antennas combined together using a low-pass coupling
with a portable media device is proposed. The antenna is network. At VHF a capacitively coupled element (CCE)
designed to attach to a smartphone or tablet as a folding cover. It antenna is used [5]-[8], where the CCE couples to the chassis
uses a capacitively-coupled element for the VHF antenna and a of the antenna, and has a dipole-like radiation pattern. A series
shorted dipole for the UHF antenna. A low-pass filter network inductor is used to cancel the capacitance of the CCE antenna,
couples the two antennas together so they can be fed from a and a parallel LC circuit is used to improve the return loss at
single port. Applications of the antenna are for the reception of the frequency where the resulting impedance is purely resistive.
mobile digital television signals such as the ATSC M/H standards A schematic of the lumped element matching circuit is shown
or DVB-H on portable media devices such as smartphones or
in Fig. 2. At VHF the antenna is very small compared to
tablets.
wavelength - its total length is 235mm or 0.15Ȝ at 195MHz –
Keywords—digital TV; mobile antennas; receiving antennas; as a result the realized gain is negative and return loss is quite
planar antenna; electrically small antennas; capacitive coupling poor. According to the Chu-Harrington limit the minimum
elements. radiation Q is high, which makes it very difficult to match over
a wide bandwidth. At UHF a shorted dipole antenna is adopted
that has been modified from the design reported in [9],[10].
I. INTRODUCTION The shorted dipole has a matching chip capacitor placed across
The increasing proliferation of smartphones, tablets and a central slot, and a connecting strip at the other end of the slot.
portable media devices has led to the development of new Appropriate design of the capacitor value and width of the
digital television standards for mobile devices. In the U.S. the connecting strip enables reasonably good matching across the
ATSC-M/H standard has been developed [1], while in Europe UHF design bandwidth of 470-698MHz. Its total length of
there is the DVB-H standard [2]. Some commercial devices are 235mm corresponds to 0.45Ȝ at 578MHz, the centre frequency
available that typically have the digital TV receiver within a of the UHF band.
dongle that attaches to the mobile device, and either an internal
or external antenna. The performance of the antennas in these
devices is typically poor, which can lead to degraded reception
of the digital TV service. Such small radiators are called
electrically small antennas (ESA) and are typically defined as
dipole antennas less than half a wavelength long and monopole
antennas less than a quarter wavelength long [3],[4]. The
radiation patterns are usually similar to those of ideal radiators
of the same name i.e. dipole or monopole. The reduced
electrical size leads to limited performance due to low radiation
resistance, high reactance and narrow bandwidth. To overcome
the limited performance of current antennas we have developed
a dual-band folding antenna that acts as cover for the
smartphone device. In this paper we describe the proposed
antenna and its preliminary theoretical performance.

II. DUAL-BAND ANTENNA AND THEORETICAL

PERFORMANCE
A list of performance objectives for the antenna is given in
Table I. Coverage of the two frequency bands is to enable
potential use of frequency diversity in areas with poor
reception. The configuration of the proposed dual-band folding
antenna is shown in Fig. 1. It is composed of two separate Fig. 1. Configuration of the dual-band VHF/UHF antenna.

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 The 2014 International Workshop on Antenna Technology

TABLE I. DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS

Frequency VHF: 174-216MHz (21.5%)

UHF: 470-698MHz (39%)

Polarization Linear

Radiation Pattern Omni

Form Factor 123 x 68 x 11.8 mm

(4.5” x 2.5” x 0.5”)

Fig. 4. Details of the lumped elements used in the matching and coupling
networks of the dual-band antenna.

The antenna has been designed using the commercial

Fig. 2. Lumped element matching network for VHF CCE antenna.
Fig. 3. Dimensions of the dual-band antenna (all dimensions in mm).
electromagnetic software CST Microwave Studio [11]. First
the individual antennas were designed separately, and then they
were combined and further optimized. It should be noted that
because mobile digital television is a receive-only system a
lower return loss can be tolerated than would be acceptable for
a transmit/receive system. Also due to the electrically small
nature of the antenna at VHF its achievable return loss over the
design bandwidth is low.
Fig. 3 shows the dimensions of the antenna obtained after
optimization. The total length is 235mm and the width is
68mm. The antenna is planar except for the CCE, which has a
volume of 68 x 20 x 10.8mm. More details of the various
matching and coupling networks are depicted in Fig. 4. This
figure also includes the values of all the lumped elements used
in the networks. The computed S-parameters are shown in Fig.
5. The simulated return loss is > 1.8dB over the VHF band, and
> 5.8dB over the UHF band. At the VHF band return loss has
been traded-off for bandwidth. It would be possible to match
the antenna very well over a very narrow bandwidth, but to
maximize realized gain over the band the return loss had to be
sacrificed. Computed realized gain is plotted for the VHF band
in Fig. 6 and for the UHF band in Fig. 7. The simulated
realized gain is > -12dBi over the VHF band, and >0.8dBi over
the UHF band.
To demonstrate the omni-directional nature of the dual-
band antenna, three-dimensional radiation patterns plots are
shown in Fig. 8 at VHF and Fig. 9 at UHF. In each figure the
mid-band frequency is chosen for the plots. It should be noted
that the patterns are similar to that of a half-wavelength dipole,
having nulls in the positive and negative z-directions and an
omni-directional type pattern in the x-y plane.

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 The 2014 International Workshop on Antenna Technology

A prototype VHF/UHF smartphone antenna has been

fabricated using printed circuit board techniques from 0.8mm
thick FR4, with a hot air solder level (HASL) finish and a braid
cable hinge. The capacitive coupling element (CCE) was
fabricated from 100ȝm brass shim and was attached to a 10mm
x 20mm x 68mm block of polystyrene using double sided tape.
The shim was attached to the FR4 and soldered to the VHF
feed line of the antenna using a small tab on the CCE. A front
view of the prototype is shown in Fig. 10, while the back view
is included in Fig. 11.

Fig. 7. Computed realized gain of the dual-band antenna at UHF.

Fig. 5. Computed S-parameters of the dual-band antenna.

Fig. 8. Three-dimensional radiation pattern of the dual-band antenna at

195MHz.

Fig. 6. Computed realized gain of the dual-band antenna at VHF.

Fig. 9. Three-dimensional radiation pattern of the dual-band antenna at

578MHz.

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 The 2014 International Workshop on Antenna Technology
Fig. 10. Front-view of dual-band antenna prototype.
Fig. 11. Back-view of dual-band antenna prototype.
III. DISCUSSION
In this design the effect of the dual-band antenna on the
internal cellular and WiFi antennas of the smartphone/tablet
have not been considered. However, by selectively removing
sections of metal from the external antenna it should be
possible for dual-band VHF/UHF antenna and internal
antennas of the smartphone/tablet to coexist. Since the antenna
locations vary on different smartphones, then the modifications
to the metal sections of the external antenna may need to be
changed for different devices.
IV. CONCLUSION
A new dual-band VHF/UHF antenna design has been
proposed. It combines a capacitively coupled element (CCE) at
VHF with a shorted planar dipole at UHF through the use of a
low-pass coupling network. The adoption of a lumped element
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matching network has enabled the design to maximize the gain
over the VHF band. Use of a folding structure enables the
antenna to be fitted to existing devices, and due to the larger
physical volume improves the performance. When used with
an appropriate receiver circuit, the antenna should prove useful
for reception of mobile digital television on a portable media
device such as a smartphone or tablet. The inclusion of both
VHF and UHF bands gives the added advantage of potentially
using frequency diversity in locations with poor signal
reception. More details on the antenna, including measured
data, will be presented at the conference.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank the Fox Technology Group (FTG) for
supporting this work and particularly W. Caldwell from FTG
and R. E. Wetmore for providing insightful discussions on the
requirements of ATSC M/H. The authors also thank Y. Jay
Guo for his input to technical discussions and Juan Tello for
assisting with fabrication of the prototype.
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