Effects of lossy dielectric material on microstrip antennas

Rapid developments in the wireless communication industry require the next generation of portable antenna designs to be internal. While these internal designs will be more rugged and aesthetically pleasing than the existing external antennas, the possibility that the external plastic of the chassis will be lossy to achieve shielding will change an internal antenna's operating characteristics substantially. Without proper consideration, this may result in a system with poor performance. Therefore, the complete internal antenna design should incorporate its fundamental operating characteristics as well as specific internal environments. In this paper, two possible internal antenna configurations that include lossy plastic chassis materials are studied using the IE3D simulation package. The numerical results demonstrate the feasibility of these internal antenna designs, achieving broad bandwidth that is required for wireless communication systems.