15 Years of Terminal Antenna Design at LEMA : An Overview

The enlarged demand for electrically small antennas in the 900 MHz - 5 GHz range started in the early nineties, with the boom in mobile phones launched by the second generation of mobile phones. The laboratory of Electromagnetics and Acoustics of EPFL was involved in the design of dedicated antennas for mobile services since 1990, and has been involved in this topic since. More specifically, we have been interested in electrically very small antennas, multiband antennas, optimization, design rules and measurement. In this paper some of the key aspects encountered during these years of work on terminal antennas will be evoked, and illustrated by practical examples.