Surface-mountable EMC monopole chip antenna for WLAN operation

A novel surface-mountable monopole chip antenna having an electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) property is presented. In addition to the radiating strip on the chip base of the antenna, a ground portion is added on the side surfaces of the chip base. The antenna ground portion is to be grounded to the system ground plane of the mobile device for practical applications. The antenna ground portion can function as an effective shielding wall between the antenna and the nearby electronic components in the device. In this case, the nearby components can be placed in close proximity to the antenna, with small effects on the antenna performances. That is, the proposed antenna is EM compatible with the nearby components. In addition, the proposed antenna is surface-mountable onto the system circuit board of the mobile device, which reduces the packaging cost of the device. The proposed antenna applied to a smart phone or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) phone for WLAN operation in the 2.4 GHz band is studied in the paper.