Design and implementation of a PIFA antenna for multi-band LTE handset applications

The favorable features of the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) standard has attracted much interest. At the lower bands of the LTE systems, designers of mobile handsets antennas face challenges of the conflicting requirements of limited space and long wavelengths. A multi-band PIFA antenna that is printed directly on the substrate is proposed for mobile handset applications. A parametric study using the CST Microwave Suite is presented to show the influences of various design parameters. The antenna design was optimized to attain a bandwidth of (0.67 GHz) centered at (2 GHz). The antenna has a compact size of 60×30×1.6mm
³
, and can be used to serve many LTE bands in the range of (1.7 GHz) to (2.37 GHz). A prototype antenna was fabricated for experimental evaluation where good agreement between simulated and measured results was obtained.