A compact planar inverted-F antenna with U-shaped strip for all-metal-shell handset application

A compact dual-band planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) with U-shaped strip is proposed in this work for all-metal-shell mobile telephone application. As metal-shell handsets are getting more and more popular nowadays, it raises a big challenge in antenna design as the metal-shell associated with surrounding electronic components like front-back-cameras and telephone receiver would affect the antenna performance. This work provides an optional solution to alleviate this problem, where the metal shell of the handset and a U-shaped strip are utilized as part of the antenna. The proposed antenna is able to generate radiation at 2.4 GHz for Wi-Fi application with the help of the metal shell while using the U-shaped strip can achieve a resonance at 1.575 GHz for GPS application. A prototype has been fabricated to verify the radiation performance in a practical handset test environment.