2010 14th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics [ANTEM] and the American Electromagnetics Conference

[AMEREM]

Ultra-Miniature UHF Antenna

using Magneto-dielectric Material
JF. Pintos, A. Louzir, P. Minard, J. Perraudeau JL. Mattei, D. Souriou, P. Queffelec
Corporate Research Rennes Laboratoire des Sciences et Techniques de l'Information, de
Thomson R&D France la Communication et de la Connaissance
1 Avenue Belle Fontaine, Cesson Sévigné, 35576, France Lab-STICC, UMR CNRS 3192 – University of Brest
jean-francois.pintos@thomson.net 6 av. Le Gorgeu, CS 93837, 29238 Brest Cedex 3

Abstract—This paper introduces an ultra-miniature UHF
antenna. The design combines different technologies to reduce
the size:(meta-material inspired shape, use of a magneto-
dielectric material as antenna support, use of an active
component and a passive matching network for frequency tuning
and impedance matching over the whole UHF band.) This
antenna has been simulated and measured on nomad type
terminal well suited for video applications.
Keywords - UHF antenna; inspired metamaterial; magneto-
dielectric material; tunable component
I. INTRODUCTION
a meander shape. Aiming to control finely its coupling, the
feeding probe (shown on Fig.1) has been transformed into a
curved half loop, which allow placing a lumped component at
the end (useful to match the antenna). In addition, an active
component is added between the meander profile and the
ground plane to modify the resonant frequency of the antenna.
For this specific design the active component is placed on the
other side of the substrate thanks to via across the substrate.
Finally, a magneto-dielectric material is used as support for the
meanderline antenna structure.

curved probe
The global shift towards digital broadcasting frees up radio
resources in the UHF band called “digital dividend". The
portable/nomadic reception of video content is among the new
applications envisioned in the digital dividend. Many systems
are already deployed in this band like DVB-T/H reception and
more recently WiMax. For these systems a real challenge is to
propose very compact antennas implemented on nomad and/or
portable terminals. The EICTA makes some recommendation
about the antennas performances [1]. Active
For antenna miniaturization, classical technologies based on component
the use of very compacted metallic shapes, high dielectric Antenna junction
material, broadband matching network [2], associated to access Lumped component
tunable active components and more recently meta-material
inspired [3] shapes, are being used. Figure 1. Top view of the antenna shape
In this paper, an ultra-miniature antenna integrated on
nomad type terminal is proposed where different technologies As shown in figure 2, the antenna is placed at the corner of
are mixed to address the full UHF band [470-862MHz]. It a PCB board simulating a nomad type terminal. The main
results a small form factor easy to implement antenna, where board is based on 1.6 mm-thick FR4 substrate (with dielectric
the highest dimension is lower than λ0/42 at 470 MHz, where constant εr=4.4 and loss-tangent Tanδ=0.027) of 230x130 mm2
size including all conductive layers.
λ0.is the wavelength in vacuum.
II. DESIGN
A. Antenna structure 130 mm
The shape of the antenna is inspired from [3] where the authors
show a very interesting ultra-miniature and efficient antenna
design. This kind of meta-material inspired electrically small
antenna can radiate with more than 95 % of total efficiency and 230 mm
with a size lower than λ0/25. The principle is to create a self
resonant design with a coupling between the feeding probe and
Figure 2. Antenna position on the nomad type terminal

978-1-4244-5050-3/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE

 2010 14th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics [ANTEM] and the American Electromagnetics Conference [AMEREM]

For the prototyping purpose, the meta-material inspired

shape is printed on 3M tape made with DuPont™ Kapton®[4] 6 0.4

material with adhesive layer and then stuck on the magneto- 5.5
0.35
dielectric material [5]. Indeed, the metallization process on 5
such specific material was not available for this prototype. 4.5 0.3

4
B. Practical realization 0.25
3.5
1) Magneto-dielectric 3

µ' and ε'

0.2

µ'
2.5
As shown in [6] and [7], the use of a magneto-dielectric ε' 0.15
2
material as substrate leads to improved frequency bandwidth Tan Dµ
1.5
and improved efficiency in comparison with using a pure Tan Dε
0.1

dielectric material. 1
0.05
0.5
Samples of magneto-dielectric material (Fig. 3) are 0 0
obtained with nanosized ferrimagnetic powder, details on 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
synthesis and characterization are presented in [5]. Briefly, Frequency (GHz)

nanosized particles of spinel ferrite Ni0.5Zn0.3Co0.2Fe2O4 were

prepared by co-precipitation method. An optimized material is
obtained after adequate heat treatment and partial filling of the
porosity by epoxy resin. This material lies between ceramic
and composite medium (with porosity close to 40%), and
shows almost constant complex permeability and permittivity
in the frequency range from 100 MHz to 700 MHz, and equal
to ~3.5-j0.15 (loss tangent~0.04) and ~4-j0.2 (loss
tangent~0.02) respectively. The refractive index n = ε ′μ ′
(ε’ and µ’ are the real parts of the permittivity and
permeability respectively) is close to 3.75. These
electromagnetic properties, in particular the low levels of
losses, show that this material could be useful to the design of
miniaturized antennas in the VHF-UHF (300MHz-700MHz)
range of frequency.
The shape of the substrate (parallelepiped sizes:
13.4x12.5x1.5 mm3) is handmade finished after an appropriate
heat treatment.
Figure 4. Measured permittivity and permeability (real parts and loss-
tangents) spectra of the elaborated magneto-dielectric material.
2) Active component
The size of the antenna, including clearance area, is very
compact (<λ0/42 at 470 MHz) and is narrow band native.
By adding an active component like a variable capacitance
diode, the antenna resonance can be tuned. To cover the whole
UHF band, a wide capacitor range is necessary. The model
chosen is based on Renesas [9] RKV500K which tunes
capacitor value from 2 pF to 18 pF with a low series resistance
from 0.05 Ω to 0.55 Ω. The impact of series resistance is not
negligible. Higher the series resistance is, smaller the S-
parameters loop is (low re(Z_antenna)). This implies a more
complex matching network or an unfeasibility from matching
point of view because of the frequency dispersion of the
response.
3) Matching network

In front of the antenna, a small matching network is

implemented to match antenna at -10 dB for each values of the
variable capacitance diode.
This network is very simple and uses only 3 lumped
components with a T topology.
III. RESULTS
Four different technologies are used to minimize the size of
the UHF antenna :
•
Inspired meta-material shape to reduce size with high
efficiency,
Figure 3. Samples of different magneto-dielectric shapes • Magneto-dielectric material to reduce size and keep
good performances,
The electromagnetic (EM) properties of the magneto- • Variable capacitance diode to address the whole UHF
dielectric material were measured using the conventional band,
coaxial line-base reflection/transmission broad-band method • Matching network to minimize losses between antenna
[8] (fabrication of torus samples, see Fig. 3). It can be noticed and the RF part.
in Fig. 4, that the global refractive index of the material The combination of these technologies gives the following
fabricated is around 4, with magnetic losses <0.1 up to 850 results.
MHz (close to the upper limit of the UHF band).
 2010 14th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics [ANTEM] and the American Electromagnetics Conference [AMEREM]

A. With lumped components 7a

The first step is to check the validity of the meta-material
inspired shape combined with magneto-dielectric material
using only lumped capacitors. All the simulations are
conducted on 3D electromagnetic (EM) simulator HFSS. The
exact measured values of the EM properties of the magneto-
dielectric material shown in Fig. 4, have been taken into
account in the simulation.
In Figs. 5 and 6, the top and bottom view of this
implementation can be seen.
C2=7pF

7b

Antenna C1
access C2=0.7pF

Figure 5. Top view of the antenna.

Figure 7. S-parameters for C1=7 pF and C2 varying from 0.7 (b) to 7 pF(a)).

Short A wide dispersion of the capacitance is necessary to cover

circuit the whole UHF band. The loops from measurement are smaller
than simulated ones and may be explained by using perfect
capacitor in simulation.
In terms of radiation performances, only simulations results
presented in Fig. 8, show a very promising performances in
comparison with the target values (in blue).

Simulated Realized Gain vs. Frequency for C1=7 pF

C2 0

-2.5
0.7 pF
Figure 6. Bottom view of the antenna.
Realized Gain (dBi)

-5 7 pF
In order to insure the coverage of the full UHF band, the -7.5
value of the capacitor C1 is fixed to 7pF while C2 values are C2=0.7 pF
varying between 0.7 pF and 7 pF. The obtained measurement -10
C2=3 pF
results, compared with simulations are shown in Fig. 7 for the -12.5
3 pF C2=7 pF
two extreme values of C2. MBRAI recommendation
-15
0.4 0.45 0.5 0.55 0.6 0.65 0.7 0.75 0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95
Frequency (GHz)

Figure 8. Simulated Realized Gain with measured values of magneto-

dielctric material.
 2010 14th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics [ANTEM] and the American Electromagnetics Conference [AMEREM]
B. With variable capacitance diode
To shift the range variation of the Renesas variable
capacitance diode (from 2 pF to 18 pF), a parallel inductor of
19 nH is added. In addition, we noticed that when increasing
capacitance C1, the loop of S-parameters is wider and should
be easier to match after optimization of the matching network.
C1=33 pF
470 MHz
865 MHz
Figure 9. Smith chart of measured S-parameters for different voltage control
on variable capacitance diode.
The red curve is used as S-parameters for optimization. It
can be notice that the dispersion of such parameters is not quite
important and will be easily matched.
The figure 10 shows the matching network obtained after
optimization. This network is based on three simple cells (two
capacitors and one serial inductor) simulated with their real
models. The corresponding return loss results are presented in
figure 11.
L1=4.1 nH C1=4.7 pF
C2=1.8 pF
Antenna
Figure 10. Matching network associated to antenna.
Measured
curve objective by optimisation
Figure 11. Measured S-parameters of the antenna after optimization.
The measured S-parameters are compliant with ours
constraints (<-10 dB) and are in line with the simulations. The
insertion losses of such matching network are lower than 0.5
dB.
IV. CONCLUSION
An ultra-miniature UHF antenna has been presented, where
the largest dimension size is lower than λ0/42 at the lowest
frequency. Several technologies have been combined together
to reduce the bulk of the antenna. The added active part is
compatible with such a terminal in terms of cost, voltage
control and power consumption. Good performances, in line
with MBRAI recommendations, have been obtained from S-
parameters. Radiation performances are still to perform but 3D
EM simulations are very encouraging.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish thank the French national agency for
research (ANR) which has partially funded this work within
the RNRT project NAOMI.
REFERENCES
[1] European Industry Associate EICTA/TCA/ MBRAI-02-16 “Front-end
and Antenna External Specification,” Mobile and Portable DVB-T
Radio Access Interface Specification, pp.14-15, 2004
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USB digital Terrestrial TV receiver”, IEEE Antenna and Propagation
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3, March 2008.
[4] http://www2.dupont.com
[5] D. Souriou, JL. Matteï, A. Chevalier, P. Queffelec, "Influential
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