Considerations for the Design of UWB Antennas for Mobile and Consumer Equipment

Abstract

This paper presents some considerations on the design, characterization and optimization of UWB (Ultra WideBand) antennas for consumer communication equipment. As a first step a method to extract the spatio-temporal UWB antenna characterization from a FDTD simulation is given. Thereafter, the shape of a planar monopole is optimized to provide broadband matching. This is followed by the integration of latter antenna into a model of a DVD player and the impact of this integration on the antenna performance is evaluated. Finally, the transfer function of the complete system is extracted and used for indoor propagation modeling in an exemplary living home environment. The results show that the antenna integration into the DVD-chassis results into a directive radiation pattern that shows a significant frequency dependency. When this antenna is used for the propagation modeling, a single frequency ray-tracing simulation shows significant variation in the radiated power distribution in the room as a result of the directive pattern. When the received power is averaged over a larger bandwidth, the coverage becomes more smooth mainly due to the frequency dependency of the radiation pattern and frequency dependent propagation effects. Indeed, comparing the results of the integrated antenna to the case of the ideal isotropic radiator, no major disadvantages can be discerned anymore.