Antennas for Digital Television Receivers in Mobile Terminals

The incorporation of new services in handheld devices, such as the Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) operating at the lower ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) band poses a challenge for antenna designers. Wideband small antennas or electrically tunable narrowband small antennas are needed to fulfil the performance requirement. It is well known that below 900 MHz the operation of embedded mobile terminal antennas is based on utilizing the whole structure of the terminal as a radiator. However, even this way reaching the whole required impedance bandwidth of about 46% at about 0.61-GHz center frequency is possible only either with clamshell-type terminals used as thick dipoles by feeding them from the hinge or with “large tablet”-sized terminals. With the popular smartphone-sized terminals with a monoblock structure the available bandwidth with good total efficiency is clearly smaller. We study the options to implement antennas for smartphone-type mobiles for receiving digital TV broadcasts at about 0.47-0.75-GHz frequencies. The mainly studied technology is the nonresonant capacitive coupling element (CCE)-type antennas having one of the smallest achieved volume-to-bandwidth ratios. We show that for a fixed-frequency antenna with a volume of less than a few cubic centimeters the total efficiency will become rather low due to moderate matching level, but the requirement of the DVB-H standard for the realized gain can easily be met. Additionally, we show that by having switching between two bands, one can implement a dual-antenna configuration with small total volume and significant multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) gain. Furthermore, we study the very important effect of the user's hands on the antenna performance and find that the effect can range from some increase of the total efficiency due to improved matching to significant losses caused by the hands. Finally, we propose some possible ways ahead in solving this very challenging antenna design problem.

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