Modifying the ground plane and its effect on planar inverted-F antennas (PIFAs) for mobile phone handsets

The ground plane of a mobile phone plays an important role on the performance of a planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA). In addition to exploring novel antennas, the effective utilization of the mobile phone ground plane and its associated volume is crucial to a successful design. We propose a uniquely modified ground plane configuration to design ultra-thin PIFAs. Both singleand dual-band design examples are provided. Computed and measured data for 900 and 1900 MHz band cases show that, by utilizing this technique, the height of PIFAs can effectively be reduced by more than 50%, thereby reducing the overall phone thickness.