Wrapped Microstrip Antennas for Laptop Computers

The objective of this article is to provide a comprehensive and unified description of the authors' work on the development of wrapped microstrip antennas for laptop applications. The first contribution is the introduction of quasi-omnidirectional wrapped-microstrip antenna elements to be integrated into the display rim of laptops. Single- and dual-band antennas are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of wrapped microstrip antenna elements in wireless communications. The prototyping and measurements of these antennas are highlighted in an appendix. The most common internal and external laptop antenna structures are also described, to give a broader overview of laptop antenna-design approaches. The second and third contributions are a methodical analysis of housing effects, and a general study of electromagnetic human interaction with laptop antennas from the antenna-performance-degradation and user-illumination perspectives. These studies have been performed systematically for several classes of internal and external antennas, with different locations and screen-opening angles. With this approach, a general overview of laptop-antenna integration aspects is given, along with unified guidelines for the design of the wireless interface used in modern laptops. An application of the novel elements to capacity-preserving MIMO arrays is also presented.