LOW-PROFILE ENHANCED-BANDWIDTH PIFA ANTENNAS FOR WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS PACKAGING

The development of small integrated antennas plays a significant role in the progress of the rapidly expanding military and commercial commu nications applications, The recent advances in RF and microwave high-d ensity circuit packaging technologies in multifunction wireless commun ications systems have called for the parallel development of compact a nd efficient antennas that can be used over a wide frequency range, Th is paper addresses the development and characterization of several low -profile and integrated antennas with enhanced bandwidth for wireless communications systems, The new radiators are developed by adding para sitic elements or tuning devices to a familiar integrated antenna-the planar inverted F antenna (PIFA), Simulations based upon the finite-di fference time-domain (FDTD) method and method of moments (MoM) are use d to model the performance of the antennas, Comparisons with measured results on fabricated antenna structures are provided for simulations validation.