Editorial Wideband, Multiband, Tunable, and Smart …downloads.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2015/536031.pdf · Editorial Wideband, Multiband, Tunable, and Smart Antenna Systems for Mobile

EditorialWideband, Multiband, Tunable, and Smart AntennaSystems for Mobile and UWB Wireless Applications 2014

Renato Cicchetti,1 Antonio Faraone,2 Diego Caratelli,3 and Massimiliano Simeoni4

1Department of Information, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy2Chief Technical Office, Motorola Solutions Inc., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33322, USA3The Antenna Company Nederland B.V., Netherlands4European Space Agency, ESA-ESTEC, Keplerlaan, Noordwijk ZH, Netherlands

Correspondence should be addressed to Renato Cicchetti; [email protected]

Received 11 March 2015; Accepted 11 March 2015

Copyright © 2015 Renato Cicchetti et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons AttributionLicense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited.

1. Introduction

With the advent of high data rate 3G and 4G wirelesscommunication systems and the app-based use paradigm,wireless connectivity through multiple air interfaces hasbecome a common requirement in the RF architecture ofmobile communication devices. Modern wireless handsetsfrequently incorporate three or more antennas to enable cel-lular voice and data,Wi-Fi, andGPS connectivity, acrossmul-tiple bands.Multiple antenna systems are frequently designedto implement diversity or spatial multiplexing schemes, asin the case of WCDMA and LTE, to increase resiliency andcapacity of wireless links and to operate multiple voice/datalinks simultaneously. Concurrently, ultrawideband (UWB)systems used in short range communications, remote sens-ing, and through-the-wall radar imaging have introduced anew paradigm in the antenna design where the mitigationof pulse distortion is of the essence, thus requiring a shiftin antenna design approach and the introduction of novelradiating systems.

This special issue is intended to reflect current R&Dtrends and novel approaches in the analysis and synthesisof antenna systems and associated RF front-ends for nextgeneration mobile communication devices, applicable tovarious device form factors such as smartphones, tablets,laptops and wearable computers as well as for UWB com-munication systems and radars. A particular emphasis hasbeen paid to the analysis anddesign of broadband,multiband,

and reconfigurable antennas for wireless and UWB appli-cations, as well as to the identification of special materialsand integration techniques with the host platform. Importantefforts have been devoted to the characterization of the radiochannel as well as to the most innovative near-field-far-field transformation techniques employed to determine theradiation properties of the antennas employed in the modernwireless communication systems.

The special issue is composed of 19 contributions that canbe divided into the following 9 clusters.

2. Contributions to Broad- andMultibanding Techniques

In “Dual-Feed Small-Size Penta-Band PIFA for LTE/WWANMobile Handset Applications” by M. Liu and B. Zhao, theauthors present a dual-feed small-size penta-band PIFA forLTE/WWAN mobile handset applications. The proposedantenna is composed of a simple U-shaped patch with dual-shorting pins connected to the ground plane. The antenna isexcited at one arm of the U-shaped radiating patch to coverthe higher band of GSM1800/1900/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500, while it is excited at the other arm to realize theGSM900.

In “A Butterfly-Shaped Wideband Microstrip PatchAntenna for Wireless Communication” by L. Sun et al.,the authors present a butterfly-shaped patch antenna for

Hindawi Publishing CorporationInternational Journal of Antennas and PropagationVolume 2015, Article ID 536031, 3 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/536031

2 International Journal of Antennas and Propagation

wideband wireless communications and radio-frequencyidentification (RFID) systems. The antenna, having a band-width of about 40%, can serve simultaneously most of themodern wireless communication standards.

In “A Multiband Printed Log-Periodic Dipole Array forWireless Communications” by G. A. Casula and P. Maxia, theauthors present a compact multiband printed Log-periodicdipole array antenna for wireless communications. The pro-posed antenna can be used for wireless communications bothin the S (2.4–3GHz) and in the C (5.2–5.8GHz) frequencybands, with very good input matching and a satisfactory end-fire radiation pattern. In addition, it presents an excellent out-of-band rejection, without the use of stop-band filters, thusavoiding interference out of its operating frequency band.

In “Bandwidth Enhancement Technique of the Mean-dered Monopole Antenna” by C.-J. Wang and D.-H. Hsieh,the authors present a small dual-band monopole antennawith coplanar waveguide feeding structure. The antenna iscomposed of ameanderedmonopole, an extended conductortail, and an asymmetrical ground plane which confer to theradiating structure the ability to cover the GSM900, the DCS,the IMT-2000, the UMTS, theWLAN, the LTE 2300, and theLTE 2500, wireless communication standards.

In “Novel Cross-Type Network for Wide-Tuning-RangeReconfigurable Multiband Antennas” by C.-S. Lee et al., theauthors presents a cross-type network design with a novelreconfigurable functionality to realize a tunable multibandantenna. It is shown that by attaching a reconfigurablenetwork at the feeding port of a broadband antenna, themulti-input impedance adjustment enables the productionof multimatching operating bands. So, the proposed novelcross-type network can be used successfully in tunable dual-band functions to decrease the processing time and theanalytical complexity of tunable-frequency devices.

In “A Compact Wideband Dual-Polarized Antenna withHarmonic Suppression Using Nonuniform Defected GroundStructure” by L. Damaj et al., the authors present an inter-esting dual-polarized wideband bowtie CPW-fed antennahaving wideband harmonic suppression obtained by meansof three nonuniform cascaded bowtie Defected GroundStructure (DGS) unit cells. The antenna has an omnidi-rectional dipole-type radiation pattern over the operatingfrequency band 2.7–5.9GHz. These characteristics allow theproposed structure to cover theUWB (lower band in Europe)and IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) frequency bands.

In “Design of Compact Trapezoidal Bow-Tie ChiplessRFID Tag” by L. Xu and K. Huang, the authors present anovel compact design of a low-cost fully printable slot-loadedbowtie chipless RFID tag. The tag, used as an ultrawidebandstructure, consists of two trapezoidal metallic patches loadedwith multiple slot resonators. Due to high data capacity andlow cost, and since it needs only one conductive layer, it canbe directly printed on personal ID, credit cards, papers, andtextile fabrics.

In “A DR Loaded Substrate Integrated WaveguideAntenna for 60GHz High Speed Wireless CommunicationSystems” by N. Ashraf et al., the authors present an array ofdielectric resonator antennas, excited by a compact feedingline formed by a substrate integrated waveguide, suitable to

operate at 60GHz. In particular, an impedance bandwidthof 10.70% with a gain up to 11.20 dBi is found for an arraycomposed of four resonator antennas.

3. Contributions to Antennas forUWB Applications

In “Two-Step BeveledUWBPrintedMonopole AntennawithBand Notch” by Y. Xiao et al., the authors present a compactprinted monopole antenna for ultra-wideband applications.Symmetrical slots, integrated along the microstrip line areemployed to realize a frequency stop band, so to avoid elec-tromagnetic interference with the WLAN communicationsystems, while those integrated on the ground plane areadopted to improve the antenna radiation patterns.

In “ACPW-FedDual-Band-NotchedAntennawith SharpSkirt Selectivity for UWB Applications” by D. Dong et al.,the authors present a coplanar waveguide-fed dual-band-notched antenna with sharp skirt selectivity for ultrawide-band applications. The antenna, composed of a radiant patchwith a C-shaped slot and a C-shaped stub integrated on theback surface of the substrate, presents dual-band-notchedcharacteristics which can reject the interference between theIEEE 802.11a bands (5.15–5.35GHz and 5.725–5.825GHz)and the UWB systems.

4. Contributions to Wearable/FlexibleAntennas

In “Design of a Circularly Polarized Galileo E6-Band TextileAntenna by Dedicated Multiobjective Constrained ParetoOptimization” by A. Dierck et al., the authors present astrategy, incorporating a multiobjective constrained Paretooptimization, to the design of a wearable Galileo E6-bandantenna with optimal return loss and wide-band axial ratiocharacteristics.The realized antenna prototypes show that theproposed optimization strategy is able to take into accountthe variations of the antenna substrate materials.

In “Novel Multiband Metal-Rimmed Antenna for Wear-able Applications” by B. Liu et al., the authors present anovel multiband antenna with an unbroken metal rim forwearable applications. The proposed antenna is composed ofa radiating metal rim and a novel feeding structure whichallows obtaining a compact antenna suitable to cover thefrequency band between 1500 and 2350MHz, ensuring atthe same time SAR values lower than that indicated by thespecific standard concerning the protection of the humanbeing by the exposure to electromagnetic fields.

5. Contributions to Substrates, SpecialMaterials, and Fabrication Techniques

In “Beam Scanning Properties of a Ferrite LoadedMicrostripPatch Antenna” by S. S. I. Mitu and F. Sultan, the authorspresent an axially magnetized ferrite loaded microstrip patchantenna with tunable beam scanning properties. In partic-ular, ferrite rods are placed in the radiation region of theantenna to perturb the 𝐸-field phase distribution resulting in

International Journal of Antennas and Propagation 3

beam scan.The realized prototype shows a beam scan rangingfrom 28∘ up to −26∘.

In “Design Variations on Planar Differential Antennawith Potential for Multiple, Wide, and Narrow Band Cover-age” by D. Pepe et al., the authors show how by modifyingthe topology of an antenna it is possible to obtain a behaviorpresenting wide, narrow, ormultiple bands. To this end, threepractical antenna implementations, based on variations ofone general planar differential antenna topology, originallyproposed for ultrawideband applications, are presented anddiscussed in detail.

6. Contributions to Reconfigurable andMultiband Antenna Technology

In “Design of a Smart Antenna for Mobile Ad Hoc Net-work Applications” by M. Di Filippo et al., the authorspresent a smart antenna capable of producing multiple, high-gain, electronically steered independent beams, made of acylindrical array of metal patches suitable for mobile adhoc networks. These networks are particularly important inseveral environments where the fixed infrastructure is notavailable, not trusted, too expensive, or unreliable.

7. Contributions to MIMO Antenna Systemsand Channel Modeling for Wi-Fi and LTE

In “Polarized Uniform Linear Array System: Beam Radia-tion Pattern, Beamforming Diversity Order, and ChannelCapacity” by X. Su and K. Chang, the authors derive thechannel capacity of polarized uniform linear array (PULA)systems using the beamforming technique in a realisticscattering environment. The numerical results show that, forPULA systems, the channel capacity, which is boosted by thebeamforming diversity, can be determined using the channelgain, the beam radiation pattern, and the beamformingdiversity order (BDO), where the BDO is dependent on theantenna characteristics and array configurations.

8. Contributions to Wireless Systems forRemote Control of Vital Parameters

In “An EM Modeling for Rescue System Design of BuriedPeople” by A. De Leo et al., the authors present an analyticalmodel developed to get some a priori design characteristicsof a rescue system, based on a R.F. detector, useful to identifythe breathing activities of buried persons in case of occur-rence of natural disasters such as earthquake, landslides, oravalanches. To validate the model, a system prototype wasbuilt using laboratory equipment, and some experimentswere carried out in a realist scenario to confirm the perfor-mance offered in the detection of respiratory activities bymeans of a R.F system.

9. Contribution to Antenna PerformanceMeasurement Techniques

In “Near-Field to Far-Field Transformation Techniques withSpiral Scannings: A Comprehensive Review” by R. Cicchettiet al., the authors present an overview of the most innova-tive spiral scanning near-field-far-field transformation tech-niques useful to derive the radiation patterns of the antennascommonly employed in themodern wireless communicationsystems. In particular, a unified theory of the spiral scanningsfor quasi-spherical and nonspherical antennas is described,and an optimal sampling interpolation expansion useful toevaluate the probe response on a quite arbitrary rotationalsurface fromanonredundant number of its samples, collectedalong a proper spiral wrapping it, is presented. Due tothe intrinsic characteristics of the technique, a remarkablereduction of the measurement time is achieved.

10. Contributions to Evaluation of the RFExposure to Wireless CommunicationDevices and Infrastructures

In “CultureMediumGeometry:TheDominant Factor Affect-ing In Vitro RF Exposure Dosimetry” by A. Paffi et al.,the authors analyze the distribution of the electromagneticfield and SAR in test tubes and Petri dishes used for theexposure of cells and/or biological samples to the RF energy.In particular, they show that the RF energy distributionwithin the samples is entirely determined by exposure vesselgeometry, orientation to the incident RF flux, frequency, anddielectric properties of the medium. The results reported inthe paper are particularly useful for those researchers who arecalled to carry out experimental measurements on biologicalsamples exposed to electromagnetic fields.

Acknowledgments

Theeditors would like to express their gratitude to the authorsand the anonymous reviewers for their contributions to thisspecial issue. As a final word to our readers, after compilingthis set of papers, we believe that it gives a good and currentoverview of the selected topics. We hope you will enjoyreading this year’s special issue as much as we have enjoyedputting it together.

Renato CicchettiAntonio FaraoneDiego Caratelli

Massimiliano Simeoni

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Editorial Wideband, Multiband, Tunable, and Smart …downloads.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2015/536031.pdf · Editorial Wideband, Multiband, Tunable, and Smart Antenna Systems for Mobile