High performance tuners for handsets

Impedance tuners are in evaluation within mobile handsets to improve radiated performance, compensate for environmental influences on antenna impedance, shrink antenna volumes and shorten design cycles. As a new component in the handset RF front end designer's toolkit, tuner specifications and value propositions are subjects of heated debate. A unified approach to specifying tuner RF performance remains to be developed. This paper proposes such a specification approach and then details the design and measured performance of an integrated tuner module against the specification.