Reconfigurable Multiband Operation for Wireless Devices Embedding Antenna Boosters

Abstract

Wireless devices such as smart meters, trackers, and sensors need connections at multiple frequency bands with low power consumption, thus requiring multiband and efficient antenna systems. At the same time, antennas should be small to easily fit in the scarce space existing in wireless devices. Small, multiband, and efficient operation is addressed here with non-resonant antenna elements, featuring volumes less than 90 mm3 for operating at 698–960 MHz as well as some bands in a higher frequency range of 1710–2690 MHz. These antenna elements are called antenna boosters, since they excite currents on the ground plane of the wireless device and do not rely on shaping complex geometric shapes to obtain multiband behavior, but rather the design of a multiband matching network. This design approach results in a simpler, easier, and faster method than creating a new antenna for every device. Since multiband operation is achieved through a matching network, frequency bands can be configured and optimized with a reconfigurable matching network. Two kinds of reconfigurable multiband architectures with antenna boosters are presented. The first one includes a digitally tunable capacitor, and the second one includes radiofrequency switches. The results show that antenna boosters with reconfigurable architectures feature multiband behavior with very small sizes, compared with other prior-art techniques.