2015 Second International Conference on Advances in Computing and Communication Engineering
A Novel Quad Band Compact Meandered PIFA
Antenna for GPS, UMTS, WiMAX, HiperLAN/2
Applications
AKHILESH VERMA DEEPAK PUNETHA
Department of Electronics and Department of Electronics and
Communication Communication
Tula's Institute Tula's Institute
Dehradun, India Dehradun, India
akhilesh.verma6388@gmail.com er.punetha@gmail.com
Abstract— In this paper a quad band compact meandered
PIFA antenna for various wireless applications is proposed. The
proposed antenna is designed as meandered PIFA Antenna in
order to obtain high gain, wide bandwidth, multiband and good
efficiency. The method of using meandered slits on top radiating
patch is use to increases the gain and further reduces the size of
conventional PIFA antenna. It also enhanced the bandwidth and
current path of the antenna. The proposed antenna is only
20mmx10mm in area and built on a very small ground plane of
size 60mm x 40mm using FR4 substrate of thickness 1.57mm.
The proposed antenna covers GPS, UMTS, WiMAX,
HiperLAN/2 and ISM bands. The simulation results are analyzed
with the help of HFSS software. Following parameters of the
antenna, including structure of the proposed antenna, return
loss, quad-band frequencies, bandwidth, and simulated
distribution of current density, radiation patterns are presented
and discussed. It is also noted that proposed antenna obtained
very high gain of 26.4689dB.
Keywords—PIFA; Meandered PIFA; Quad Band; Return loss;
Wide bandwidth; UMTS.
I. INTRODUCTION
With the rapid development in wireless communication
technologies, the demand of internal antennas increasing. Now
a days current market requires small and multifunctional
devices. The increasing number of different communication
system has led to the increased number of internal antennas in
one terminal [1]. The interest of the internal antenna has been
increasing in the mobile handset applications. Most of these
antennas were developed to meet the demand of the increasing
cellular phone market [2]. In last three decades, Planar Inverted
F Antenna has emerged as one of the most promising candidate
in the category of low profile antenna [3]. PIFA has proved to
be the most widely used internal antenna in commercial
wireless applications. PIFA consider as a sort of Inverted F
antenna (IFA), where the thin wire has been replaced with a
large metallic plate in order to increase the bandwidth. PIFA is
also called a short-circuited microstrip antenna due to the fact
that the structure of short circuit MSA resembles to the PIFA
antenna. The shorting post near the near the feed point of PIFA
structure is a good method for reducing the antenna size [4],
978-1-4799-1734-1/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE 404
DOI 10.1109/ICACCE.2015.91
DIWAKER PANT
Department of Electronics and
Communication
Tula's Institute
Dehradun, India
diwaker.pant@gmail.com
but this result into the narrow impedance bandwidth. Narrow
bandwidth characteristic of PIFA is one of the limitations for
its use in wireless mobile devices [5]. The resonance frequency
of PIFA is given by the formula:

 = (1)

Where c is the speed of light, Lp and Wp are the length and
width of top patch, fo is the resonant frequency.
Fig. 1. Typical Planar Inverted-F (PIFA) Antenna Structure [6]
To improve the characteristics of conventional PIFA and
overcome the limitations of narrow band width, single band
operation and to reduce the further size of PIFA antenna,
meander line structure can be introduced. Meandered PIFA
has been generally employed for further size reduction,
multiband implementation, achieve high gain, and enhanced
bandwidth. In this paper a compact, low profile quad-band
meandered PIFA antenna is presented [9].
II. MEANDERED PIFA ANTENNA
The meander line structures are commonly known for the
multiband performance. This type of antenna is use, where it
can resonate broadband and produces circular, horizontal and
vertical polarizations. It also achieves high gain which is
higher than that of other antenna in market [7]. These antenna
structures are physically small, electrically large. Here
electrical length of an antenna is defined as the length
expressed as number of wavelengths. A meander line antenna
can be realized by bending the conventional linear monopole
to decrease the size of antenna. The influence of the meander
part of the antenna is similar to a load and the meander lines as
shown in fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Equivalent model of meander line section [8]

III. PROPOSED ANTENNA STRUCTURE AND DESIGN

CONSIDERATIONS
The dimension of proposed antenna is shown in fig. 3 and fig.
4. The antenna is built in an FR4 substrate that is h=1.57 mm
thick and has a permittivity of 4.4 with dielectric tangent loss
δ=.02. The size of the top radiating plate is 20 x 10 mm2 which
is mounted on ground plane of size 60 x 40 mm2. This material
is widely use in mobile phones because of its low cost. The
height of the top radiating patch above the ground plane is H=
3.57 mm and the thickness of top radiating patch is 0.2 mm.
Fig. 3. Proposed Meandered Planar Inverted F Antenna
The top radiating patch is shorted to the ground plane with the
help of shorting plate of thickness 5 mm and length of 3.57
mm.
Fig. 5. Side View of Proposed Meandered Planar Inverted F Antenna
Fig. 4 shows the detailed configuration proposed antenna. In
this structure, a SMA connector is placed behind the ground
plane is used to feed the antenna. The middle pin of the
connector is soldered to the top patch via hole in ground plane.
A shorting plate of width 5 mm is used to short-circuit the top
patch to the ground plane. The top radiating meander patch
consist of two rectangular slots, first slot S1 has length 7 mm,
width is .75 mm and second slot S2 has length 7 mm and width
is .8 mm. In this structure, two rectangular slots has created to
enhance the bandwidth, increase the gain and it also increase
the electrical length and decrease the physical length of
antenna. It is also noted that by varying the length and width of
meandered slots, return loss, bandwidth and gain of the antenna
also varies. By varying the meandered slots geometry of the
top meandered patch, the desired quad-band frequencies
operation is able to be implemented. When air gap between top
patch and ground plane increase, bandwidth also increases but
return loss decreases but size of the antenna also increases
which make it unsuitable for use in handheld devices. The
detail dimensions of proposed antenna shows in table 1.
TABLE I. Mender PIFA Antenna Parameters

Parameter Value(mm) Parameter Value(mm)

Lg 60 Ls 3.57

Wg
40 Ws 5

Lp 20 S1 Length=7,
Width=.75
Wp 10 S2 Length=7,
Width=.8
H 3.57 h 1.57

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The Performance of proposed antenna has simulated in
ANSOFT HFSS (High Frequency Structure Simulator). The
magnitudes of S11 parameters are shown in fig. 6. It can be
visualize from S11 plot that there are four frequencies at which
Fig. 4. Detailed dimensions of Proposed Meandered Planar Inverted F
Antenna

405
resonance occurs. The proposed antenna covers following
frequencies, 1.4 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 3 GHz and 5.7 GHz, which
covers GPS, UMTS, WiMAX, HiperLAN/2 and ISM band.

(d)
Fig. 7. Simulated radiation pattern of the proposed antenna for E and H plane
at (a) 1.4 GHz (b) 2.1 GHz (c) 3 GHz (d) 5.7 GHz

Fig. 6. Simulated return loss of the proposed antenna The radiation pattern is the relative distribution of power
radiated as the function of direction. Usually radiation pattern
The return loss of the proposed antenna is -24.9742, -19.6426, - is determined in the far field region.
21.6596, -18.0643 at resonance frequencies of 1.4 GHz, 2.1
GHz, 3 GHz and 5.7 GHz as shown in fig. 6. By applying
meandered structure on top radiating patch, bandwidth of the
antenna increased. The first two bands achieved large
bandwidth of 1.2006 GHz. In these structure two rectangular
slots has created to enhance the bandwidth, so that electrical
length of the antenna has been increased and physical length of
the antenna decreases. The radiation patterns for the four bands
are shown in fig. 7(a)-(d). The gain for the 1.4 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 3
GHz and 5.7 GHz are 26.4689 dB, 4.1457 dB, -2.3452 dB and
0.9900 dB respectively.
Fig. 8. Simulated VSWR of the proposed antenna

It is also observed from the results that at resonant frequencies

the voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) is below 2 dB which
is required for most of the antenna applications. It is shown in
fig. 8 that at 1.4 GHz VSWR is 0.9808 dB, at 2.1 GHz is
1.8167 dB, at 3 GHz is 1.4383 dB, at 5.7 GHz is 2.1823.

(a)

(a)

(b)

(c) (b)

406
 (c)

Fig. 11. Simulated parameters of the proposed antenna

It is observed from all simulated results, size of the proposed

(d)
Fig. 9. Scalar electric field distribution of the proposed antenna (a) f 1=1.4
GHz (b) f2=2.1 GHz (c) f3=3 GHz (d) f4=5.7 GHz
antenna has reduced to great extent and achieve good gain,
large bandwidth by applying meandered slots to the antenna
illustrated in [10].
V. CONCLUSION
The main objective of this research work to achieve with new
structure that supports GPS, UMTS, WiMAX, HiperLAN/2
bands and designed antenna can be used in any portable
devices because of its low profile, small size features. By
applying the meander slots on top radiating patch, the resonant
frequency of the antenna can be lowered and its result in size
reduction of the antenna. The meander structure on radiating
element helps in achieving multiband resonance, wide
bandwidth and large gain as compared to conventional PIFA.
The proposed MPIFA has compact in size and can be used in
handheld devices.

(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Fig. 10. Simulated 3 D radiation pattern of the proposed antenna at (a) f1=1.4
GHz (b) f2=2.1 GHz (c) f3=3 GHz (d) f4=5.7 GHz
Figure 11 summarizes the mean antenna parameters for the
selected band as peak directivity, peak gain, radiated and
accepted power, radiation efficiency. The proposed antenna
shows good values for these parameters especially the gain and
radiation efficiency.
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