Dual-port Conformal PIFA Diversity Antenna for Small Cylindrical Groundplane Mounting

This paper presents and characterizes a dual-feed PIFA diversity antenna wrapped around a small cylindrical groundplane (ka ~ 0.8). Two rotation-spaced coax cables feed the conformal PIFA from the cylinder. The envelope correlation coefficient is less than 0.1 and the total efficiency of both ports for a copper antenna and PEC structure is ~ 80% at 2.45 GHz. This design is suitable for MIMO applications on small frames such as found on unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, bicycles, and radio masts.