Miniaturized printed wire antenna for wireless communications

Miniaturized printed-circuit-board wire antennas are investigated for wireless local access network (WLAN) and Bluetooth applications. The proposed wire antenna in F shape could have a much smaller area than an inverted F antenna with similar bandwidth. It is found an F antenna can usually be inductively tuned but the bandwidth decreases if the size is reduced from a quarter wave length. The bandwidth as a function of the antenna vertical and parallel arm lengths is characterized with numerical simulations. The antenna with an area of about 14 mm by 6 mm for 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band, similar to the size of a chip, is designed and tested with a bandwidth of about 200 MHz. The antenna range and blind spot are also discussed.