An internal EBG antenna for indoor reception of UHF terrestrial digital TV broadcasting

A novel internal antenna has been developed for indoor reception of UHF terrestrial digital TV broadcasting. The new antenna has a bandwidth of more than 60%. It is an unbalanced resonant antenna that does not need a matching circuit or a balun. The overall size of the new antenna is very small and its manufacturing costs are very low. It is made of a flexible material and it can be bent and/or folded and shaped in any form. It can be used as an internal, external or partially internal and partially external antenna. The new digital TV receiving antenna is linearly polarized. It can also be modified in order to be dual-polarized, which is a very important factor in all indoor applications. This can be easily achieved by bending the antenna 90°. Bending the antenna in more than one direction significantly increases its sensitivity to different polarizations and also reduces the effect of the surrounding environment on the antenna. The overall efficiency of the new indoor digital TV receiving antenna is more than 80% and its peak gain is about 2 dBi over the whole UHF band. The peak gain can be increased to more than 5 dBi over the whole band by adding EBG (electromagnetic band gap) structures to the new digital TV receiving antenna. The EBG structure also improves the return loss of the antenna and increases its efficiency to around 90% over most of the band.