Study and Reduction of the Mutual Coupling Between Two Mobile Phone PIFAs Operating in the DCS1800 and UMTS Bands

Several solutions are presented to reduce the mutual coupling between two planar inverted-F antennas (PIFAs) working in close radiocommunication standards and positioned on a finite-sized ground plane modeling the printed circuit board (PCB) of a typical mobile phone. First, the two PIFAs are designed on separate PCBs to, respectively, operate in the DCS1800 and UMTS bands. In a second step, they are associated on the top edge of the same PCB. Realistic arrangements are then theoretically and experimentally studied. Finally, several solutions are investigated to maximize the isolation. They consist in inserting a suspended line between the PIFAs' feedings and/or shorting points. All along this paper, several prototypes are fabricated and their performances measured to validate the obtained IE3D moment method-based simulation results