2014 International Symposium on Technology Management and Emerging Technologies (ISTMET 2014), May 27 - 29, 2014,

Bandung, Indonesia

Dual-band Planar Inverted F Antenna with Parasitic

Element for LTE and WiMAX Mobile
Communication
F. N. M. Redzwan, M.T. Ali, M.N. Md. Tan, NF. Miswadi
Antenna Research Group (ARG), Microwave Technology Center (MTC), Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FKE),
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam,
Selangor, 40450, Malaysia.
fatimahredzwan@gmail.com, mizi732002@yahoo.com, mnor1408@yahoo.com, farahmiswadi@gmail.com

Then, when the wire radiator element is replace by a plate in

order to increase the bandwidth, its become the PIFA structure.
PIFA antenna consists three main components which are finite
ground plane, top radiating patch and the shorting wall (plate)
that plug into the top radiating patch and ground plane together.

Abstract In this paper, a new conception of dual-band

Planar Inverted F Antenna (PIFA) for mobile communication
application purposes have been staged. The dual- band antenna
is designed by introducing a rectangular form of parasitic
element which is located under the main radiating patch of the
PIFA in order to attain a dual-band operating frequencies. This
dual-band PIFA can be operated at two different operating
frequencies which are 2600 MHz for Long Tem Evolution (LTE)
Band 7and 3500 MHz for WiMAX application. The antenna is
made up from rectangular planar element located above the
Flame Retardant 4 (FR4) dielectric substrate and the shorting
plate that connect between the top radiating patch to the ground
plane. The ground plane is positioned along the bottom side of
the substrate. The overall dimension of this antenna is 17.8 mm x
16.5 mm and the height of the antenna is 5 mm. The simulated
radiation pattern shows nearly omni-directional with obtaining a
gain antenna of 4 to 5 dBi at two different operating frequencies.
The antenna design in term of antenna structure, return loss, far
field radiation pattern,VSWR and antenna gain are presented in
this paper.

Before the PIFA antenna is introduced, the monopole

antenna such as whip antenna quarter wavelength monopole
antenna is commonly practiced in the conventional mobile
devices [2]. The size of this conventional antenna is large and
can only operate on one operating frequency at one time. Other
than that, this conventional antenna cannot support many
operating frequencies simultaneously, which is it is not
multiband. Unfortunately, these types of antenna are not
suitable anymore for current mobile devices. Therefore, PIFA
is widely used as the built-in antenna for mobile devices due to
its small size and light weight. Hence, by using one single
structure of the antenna, PIFA capable to operate on multifrequency purposes as reported in [3-8] and these antennas also
can be act as the frequency reconfigurable antenna as reported
in [9,10].

Keywords planar; inverted-F antenna; dual-band; FR4

dielectric; return loss.

I.

With respect to the task of designing the dual-band PIFA

configuration, several works and techniques can be found in
the previous antenna literature [11-13]. There are several
methods of antenna design that could produce dual-band PIFA
such as by using a split-ring resonators technique as reported in
[7] or by embedding a U-shaped slot in the antennas main
radiating patch as mentioned in [8] or by meandering the main
radiating element [9] and spiral the antennas tail and introduce
the ground slot in order to create a new operation band as
reported in [10]. The authors in [10] also uses slot on the
ground plane in order to enhance the bandwidth performances.
All these method introduced from these literature are quite
complex and need much effort to assemble for PIFA
configuration to obtain dual-band frequency operations. Other
than that, the size of these antenna are quite large and not
suitable to used as internal antenna in mobile devices.

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, the antenna technology increases greatly in

order to support the increasing number of service bands and
several applications when there is a changing in the antenna
design environment. Hence, it is a needed for the mobile
handsets to access more than one services such as voice, data
and video at anywhere and anytime. Planar Inverted F Antenna
(PIFA) is one of the most popular and commonly used as the
interior antenna for the mobile handsets. It is due to the
advantages of this type of antenna. This PIFA has several
advantages which are compact size, low profile, and can be
mounted on the rear screen of the mobile phone [1]. It is also
easy to built-in, ease fabrication and more economical which
has low manufacturing cost. The PIFA evolution is starting
from the structure of Inverted F Antenna (IFA) where the top
radiating patch of monopole antenna is bent down and parallel
to the ground plane in order to decrease the height of antenna.

978-1-4799-3704-2/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

In this paper, the design of dual-band Planar Inverted F

Antenna is presented with the unveiling of a rectangular
shape parasitic element positioned on top of the dielectric

62

Wg
substrate and opposite with the patch ingredient. This design is
simple and no complexity to construct compared than previous
dual-band PIFAs literature.
The main objective of this paper is to design dual-band
PIFA antenna to operate at two different resonant frequencies.
By placing a parasitic element near the main radiating patch
the PIFA could excite another resonant frequency and
achieved dual-band operation. After serving with the
optimization of the design, the PIFA configuration satisfies to
cover two services which are Long Term Evolution (LTE)
applicable at 2600 MHz and Worldwide Interoperability for
Microwave Access (WiMAX) application at 3500 GHz at -10
dB reflection coefficient. All the idea is tested through
simulation on an FR4 microstrip substrate of
characteristics:r=4, h=1.6mm and tan = 0.02. The design of
dual-band PIFA and results will be discussed in detail in this
paper.

Lg
Lg
L2

L1

L1
Lr (a)W

This report is divided into four sections as follows:

Section I discuss the introduction of PIFA. Part II presents the
antenna pattern and structure of dual-band PIFA, section III
presents about the simulation results and section IV will
summarize the conclusion of this paper.
II.

H
(b)

Lr

Fig. 2. The geometry of conventional PIFA structure (a) top view (b) side
view

The principal intentions of using the shorting plate are to

reduce the size of this antenna and also to support the whole
antenna structure.

ANTENNA DESIGN AND STRUCTURE

B. PIFA Design Calculation

Equation (1) below shows the basic formulas that can be
used to determine the total dimension of the main radiating
patch for this PIFA structure. The length, L1 and width, L2 are
calculated based on the equation below in which, c represents
the speed of light and f is the resonant frequency. In the case
of dual-band PIFA as presented in this paper, the resonant
frequency is picked out to be the lower resonant frequency
which is 2.6 GHZ (LTE) in order to ascertain the overall
proportion of the top radiating patch. These calculated values
had been optimized in the simulation software
(CST Microwave Studio 2011) to obtain the desired frequency
as needed.

A. Conventional Planar Inverted F Antenna Structure

Fig. 1 shows the overall structure of conventional PIFA. It
consists of three main elements such as the top radiating
patches, shorting plate or wall and a large ground plane as a
reflection surface. Fig. 2 shows the top view and side view of
conventional PIFA structure. The shorting plate with the
height, H is used to connect between the main top patch to the
ground plane and also to maintain the whole antenna. Between
the top radiating patch and ground plane there is an air gap
with dielectric constant, r = 1. The dimension for the
rectangular top patch is L1 x L2 and the dimension of the
ground plane is Lg x Wg.
Wg

Ground plane

Where,
(L1 +L2) = y
L2

y = total length of the patch

f = resonance frequency (GHz)

Lg
L1

C. Dual-band PIFA Structure with Rectangular Shape

Parasitic Element
In this paper, the dual-band PIFA is constructed by placing the
parasitic element near with the main radiating patch as shown
in Fig. 3. The rectangular shape parasitic element with length,
S2 and width, S1 is positioned at the right edge of the ground
plane. The position of parasitic element is resolved in this
paper is based on the preliminary studies and this attitude can
be varied to obtain the optimum results of return loss, VSWR,
gain and bandwidth. But, in this paper the position of the
parasitic element is chosen to be close to the edge of ground

Feeding
point

H
Ws
Fig. 1. The geometry of conventional PIFA structure

63

III.

plane in order to achieve 50 impedance matching. Before the

parasitic element is added to the PIFA structure, the PIFA is
operated on single - band frequencies only which is at 2.6
GHz for LTE application. After the parasitic element is added
opposite to the top radiating patch, the PIFAs response will
excite another frequency band (upper band) and resonate at
3.5 GHz (WiMAX).

In this section, all the simulation results for dual-band PIFA

for LTE Band 7 (2500-2690 MHz) and WiMAX (3400-3690
MHz) will be explains and presented. This dual-band PIFA is
good enough to be used for mobile communication application
because of the return loss value, S11, which has attained a
desired value of -10 dB at both operating frequencies.
This dual-band PIFA design was simulated using CST
Microwave Studio 2011 and the PIFA parameters is tabulated
in Table 1. The copper plate thickness of main patch and
shorting plate is equal which is 0.45 mm. The gap between top
radiating patch and the ground plane is filled with air as
dielectric material. Using air as a dielectric material on PIFA
could give an effect to its bandwidth and gain. In order to
increase the bandwidth of PIFA, the height of shorting plate,
H is chosen to be 5 mm. It is because, based from the previous
studies, the bandwidth will become wider when the height of
shorting plate, H is an increase [11].

Wg

Ground plane
L2

Lg
L1

Feeding
point

S1
S2

Ws

Lr

Parasitic
element

Parameters
L1
L2
W
H
Lr

Lr

Fig. 3. The proposed dual-band PIFA structure with rectangular shaped

parasitic elements

TABLE I.

Wg

Lg
L1
L1

Lr

S2
W

(a)

Ls

Values (mm)
17.8
16.0
16.0
5.0
7.0

DIMENSION OF DUAL-BAND PIFA DESIGN

A. Dual-band frequency ranges

In this paper, the PIFA design is resonating at two different
frequencies which at 2.6 GHz for LTE application and 3.5 GHz
for WiMAX application as presented in Fig. 5. In order to
obtain dual-band PIFA, a rectangular shape parasitic patch is
applied and coupled to the main patch to generate the second
band. The parasitic patch has been assigned close to the
radiating edges of the main radiating patch. After adding the
parasitic patch to the main top patch of the original PIFA
another band of PIFA has been generated at higher frequency.
The length and width of the parasitic patch are optimized in the
CST simulation software in order to get the desired resonant
frequencies at 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz. The simulated result for
return loss for this dual-band PIFA is observed when the
length,S1 of the parasitic element is varied.

Lg

L2

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

H
(b)

Fig. 4. The geometry of the proposed dual-band PIFA structure with

rectangular shape parasitic element (a) top view (b) side view

Fig. 4 shows the dual-band PIFA structure with

rectangular shape parasitic elements (S1 x S2) from two sides
which are the top view and side view. The total dimension of a
rectangular shape parasitic element is 12.7 mm x 11.23 mm.
The feeding technique that is used in this dual-band PIFA
design is a probe feed technique where 50 SMA connectors
with radius 2.135 mm is fed at the top of the main radiating
patch. The 50 coaxial SMA connector is fed through via
between the ground plane to the top of the rectangular patch.

In the simulation results, it can be ascertained that the

ranging frequency for lower band is jumping from 2.55 GHz to
2.65 GHz. While, from upper band the frequency range is
ranging from 3.40 GHz to 3.62 GHz. From this result, it can be
stated that these two bands satisfied the desired of the
frequency range for LTE and WiMAX applications.
B. Return Loss (dB)
Fig. 5 shows the simulated return loss, dB for this dualband PIFA resonated at the dual frequency band. The value for
return loss at 2.6 GHz resonant frequency is -22.82 dB and
-26.82dB at upper resonant frequencies (3.5GHz).
The maximum return loss which is -26.82 dB is achieved at
higher frequency compared than lower resonant frequency.

The position of feeding point and shorting plates is varied

to obtain the best results. The size of the proposed dual-band
PIFA design is compact and small as compared to the
conventional PIFA. The overall size of the presented dualband PIFA is reduced about half from the conventional PIFA
to suit the current demand in the wireless communication
technology and the size of current mobile devices today.

64

At -10 dB return loss with VSWR 2:1, the impedance

bandwidth of the first and second resonant frequency are 0.1
GHz and 0.22 GHz, respectively. It can be seen that, the
achieved bandwidths with a reflection coefficient better than 10 dB are 100 MHz (265-255 MHz) in the LTE band and 220
MHz (3620 3400 MHz). It is clear to observe that, the
bandwidth in the upper band frequency is wider which is two
times than the lower band due to the addition of the parasitic
element in the antenna design. Hence, it is proven that the
parasitic element can provide an increase in the antenna
bandwidth and at the same time its also produce dual-band
frequency operation.[12]

The dimension and position of the parasitic element also

give effect to the result of return loss, dB. The parasitic length
is optimized in order to get the best result of return loss which
is greater than -25 dB at both resonant frequencies.
The gap between the top radiating patch and the rectangular
shape parasitic elements C produces an appropriate capacitance
to balance the inductance came from the shorting plate[13].
The increasing of capacitance in this antenna can reduce the
effect of inductance from the shorting plate. Hence, the
capacitance of this parasitic element introduces a new resonant
mode while maintaining the first resonance mode.
Fig. 6 above shows the effect of the variation of parasitic
length, S1 towards the simulated return loss. The parasitic
length is varied from S1=10 mm until S1=15 mm.
It is noticeable that, as the parasitic elements length is
increased the operating frequencies are shifted to the right, but
it is limited until S1= 15 mm due to the value of its capacitance
It has achieved the threshold length where theoretically, based
on the equation of resonant frequency in Eq. (2). The resonant
frequency is determined based on the value of capacitance
(parasitic element), where L and C are the value of inductance
and capacitance of the resulting antenna [14]

-5

S11 (dB)

-10

-15

-20

-25

(2)

-30
2.0

2.2

2.4

2.6

2.8

3.0

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

4.0

4.2

4.4

4.6

4.8

5.0

Frequency (GHz)

In the theory of capacitance, the area (L and W) of the parasitic

element could influence the value of capacitance and this is
proven by an Eq. in (3). [15]

Fig. 5. Simulated return loss (dB) of the dual-band PIFA with rectangular
parasitic element

It has been found that, different position of the shorting

plate along the edge of the ground plane in X-direction will
influence the shift of the center of the resonant frequency. It is
also has been found that the operating frequency of this
dual-band PIFA can be tuned by varying the width, length and
height, H of the main radiating patch.

(3)

Where,
A = surface area [m2]

d = distance between plates [m]

-5

0 = permittivity of free space = 8.854 x 10-12 F/m

-10

r = relative permittivity of the dielectric

S11 (dB)

-15

C. Radiation Pattern and Antenna Gain

Fig.7 and Fig. 8 represent the simulated radiation pattern
for dual-band propose PIFA at two operating frequencies.
Fig. 6 shows the simulated radiation pattern in 3D view at 2.6
GHz and Fig. 7 shows that simulated radiation pattern at 3.5
GHz. From these figures, it can be seen that the radiation
pattern of both frequencies is nearly omnidirectional that is
suitable for mobile communication application. This PIFA
antenna is popular among the antenna designers because of its
far-field radiation pattern that is nearly omni-directional.

-20
-25
S1 = 10.00 mm
S1 = 11.25 mm
S1 = 12.70 mm
S1 = 13.75 mm
S1 = 15.00 mm

-30
-35
-40
2.0

2.2

2.4

2.6

2.8

3.0

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

4.0

4.2

4.4

4.6

4.8

5.0

Frequency (GHz)

At 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz resonance frequency for LTE and
WiMAX application, the antenna exhibits almost an
omnidirectional radiation pattern with a gain of 4.07 dB and
4.55 dB.

Fig. 6. Simulation results as a function of different length of the rectangular

parasitic element, S1. Other parameters are remaining constant as Tabulated in
Table 1.

65

Fig. 8 shows the simulated result of VSWR for this dualband PIFA. It can be stated that, the VSWR for both
frequencies are about 1.2 and 1.1, which is less than 2 and it is
proved that the antenna impedance matching for this dual-band
PIFA is considered very good. It is because, only 0.8 % power
is reflected back from the antenna and the value of mismatch
loss is only about 0.04 dB for VSWR=1.2.

From these figures, it can be ensured that the value of

antenna gain for upper band frequency is slightly higher than
the antenna gain for lower band (2.6 GHz). It is because, at the
second resonant frequency the loss due to the surface wave
propagation is less compared than the loss at the first resonance
frequency due to the presence of parasitic patch. According to
the theory of microstrip antenna, the antenna gain can be
increased if the loss due to the surface wave propagation is
reduced.

5.0
4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
2.0

2.2

2.4

2.6

2.8

3.0

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

4.0

4.2

4.4

4.6

4.8

5.0

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 7. Simulated 3D far field radiation pattern at 2.6 GHz resonance

frequency.

Fig. 9. Simulated VSWR for the dual-band PIFA with rectangular parasitic
element

IV.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, the design of dual-band Planar Inverted F

Antenna with rectangular parasitic element was presented and
discussed. The presented dual-band antenna in this paper is
used for LTE and WiMAX mobile communication application
at 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz. The aim of this paper is to produce
the dual-band PIFA antenna that can operate simultaneously
on one single structure of the antenna. The dual-band PIFA
produced a good impedance bandwidth with of 100 MHz and
220 MHz with the height, H is 5 mm and the gain is 4 dB to 5
dB. This antenna design is simple in structure by introducing a
rectangular parasitic element which is located opposite to the
main radiating patch in order to produce the dual-band
operation antenna.

Fig. 8. Simulated 3D far field radiation pattern at 3.5 GHz resonance

frequency.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the Faculty of Electrical
Engineering (Antenna Research Group), Microwave
Technology Center (MTC), UiTM and Ministry of Higher
Education (MOHE), Malaysia.

Note that the antenna radiation efficiency of the dual-band

PIFA at 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz is about -0.018 dBi to -0.019
dBi and it can be said that this antenna has high efficiency
where almost 99% of the power present at the antennas input
radiated away.

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[1]

VSWR = (1+ ) / (1- )

(4)

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