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Compact Folded Dipole Antenna for DTV Signal Reception

Ding-Bing Lin1 , Shiao-Ting Wu1 , and Chao-Hsiung Tseng2
1

Department of Electronic Engineering

Graduate Institute of Computer and Communication Engineering
National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan
2
Department of Electronic Engineering
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan

Abstract In this paper, a compact simple folded dipole antenna for digital television (DTV)
signal reception in the 470850 MHz band is proposed. The antenna consists of two metal thin
meander lines and narrow rectangular radiating patches. It is feeded by 50 SMA connector and
printed on a dielectric substrate FR4. By appropriate tuning geometrical parameters, the final
designed antenna has only compact volume with 80 28 0.4 mm3 .The antenna can be excited
to provide a wide bandwidth (5 dB return loss) of larger than 55%.
1. INTRODUCTION

The DTV reception has thus become very attractive for application in mobile communication
devices such as the laptop computers, mobile phones, personal media players [1]. Similarly, it is
also very attractive for vehicle owners to have their vehicles equipped with a DTV signal reception
device. For these perspective trends, it is anticipated that a variety of mobile antenna for DTV
signal reception will be increasingly required. The conventional dipole antenna are usually with
a center-fed connector structure. It has narrow bandwidth, which is difficult to cover the DTV
signal reception. The novel end-fed modified planar dipole antenna with additional resonant mode
adjacent to the antenna fundamental (0.5-wavelengh) resonant mode can be excited. These two
resonant modes can be formed into a wide operating band of larger than conventional center-fed
planar dipole [2, 3]. Also note that the concept of using two adjacent resonant mode excited in
the proposed dipole antenna for broadband operation are different from that of using two separate
resonant mode excited in the reported dipole antenna with two U-slotted arms or two L-slotted
arms for dual-band operation [4, 5].
In this paper, we present a novel side-fed modified planar dipole antenna having wide bandwidth
of larger than 55% which can cover DTV receiver frequency from 470850 MHz. The proposed
antenna also has a planar configuration and is easy to fabricate at low cost by printing on a dielectric
substrate. Details of the proposed antenna are described in this article and the experimental results
of constructed prototype are presented.
2. ANTENNA DESIGN

Figure 1(a) shows the proposed compact folded dipole antenna. The antenna is fed by 50 SMA
connector and printed on a 0.4-mm thick FR4 substrate and look like business card shape (width
28-mm and length 80-mm). The antenna consists of two metal thin meander lines and narrow
rectangular radiating patches. It can generate a fundamental resonant mode centered at about
520 MHz (0.5-wavelength), allowing the antenna to cover the lower-edge frequency (470 MHz) of
the DTV band. However, in order to cover the upper-edge frequency (850 MHz) we used inverted
U shaped to generate a high-order resonant mode. In addition, we use the rectangular radiating
patches to create the slow wave effect for reducing the antenna size. Fig. 1(b) shows the concept
used for broadening the impedance matching bandwidth. The metal thin meander line take on
inductance effect and the patches take on capacitance effect. In this case, good impedance matching
across a wide frequency range for DTV signal reception in the UHF band can be achieved.
3. MEASUREMENTS

The proposed antenna with dimensions given in Fig. 1 was fabricated and studied. Fig. 2 shows
the measured return loss for proposed antenna with and without rectangular patches. It is seen
that, with rectangular patches, matching bandwidth can be shifted to lower frequency band due
to the influence of slow wave effect. The impedance bandwidth is enough to cover the DTV signal
reception. Fig. 3 shows the measured return loss of the coupling gap d varied as 0.5, 1 and 2 mm.

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(a)

(b)

Figure 1: (a) The proposed compact folded dipole antenna. (b) To create both the inductance and capacitance effect for impedance matching bandwidth.

Figure 2: Measured return loss for proposed antenna with and without rectangular patches.

Figure 3: Measured return loss with different coupling gaps.

By changing the value of d, the mutual coupling between the metal thin meander line and narrow
rectangular radiating patches effect can provide the way of the controlling the required bandwidth
and impedance matching over the DTV frequency band. Fig. 4 plots the measured radiation
patterns at 520, 683 and 815 MHz, respectively. The radiation pattern is almost omni-directional
at x-y plane. This antenna has a good radiation pattern over the DTV frequency reception.

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Figure 4: Measured far-field radiation pattern at 520 MHz, 683 MHz and 815 MHz for the proposed antenna.
4. CONCLUSIONS

A compact folded dipole antenna for DTV signal reception in 470850 MHz band has been proposed
and studied. The antenna is with a simple structure and is easy to fabricate with a low cost. The
proposed antenna using narrow rectangular radiating patches and coupling gap d can provides the
way of the controlling the required bandwidth and impedance matching over the DTV frequency
band. This antenna has an omni-directional radiation pattern. The proposed antenna also shows
good radiation characteristics for frequencies across the operating band.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank the National Science Council of the Taiwan, for financially supporting this research under Contract No. NSC 96-2218-E-027-007.
REFERENCES

1. Digital Television, Major Initiatives of Federal Communications Commission, [Online]. Available: http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/.

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2. Chi, Y. W., K. L. Wong, and S. W. Su, Broadband printed dipole antenna with a step-shaped
feed gap for DTV signal reception, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propag., Vol. 55,
33533356, Nov. 2007.
3. Iizuka, H., T. Watanabe, K. Sakakibara, and N. Kikuma, Stub-loaded folded dipole antenna
for digital terrestrial TV reception, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, Vol. 5,
260261, Dec. 2006.
4. Iizuka, H., T. Watanabe, K. Sato, and K. Nishikawa, Modified H-shaped antenna for automotive digital terrestrial reception, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., Vol. 53, 25422548, Aug.
2005.
5. Su, C. M., H. T. Chen, and K. L. Wong, Printed dual-band dipole antenna with U-slotted
arms for 2.4/5.2 GHz WLAN operation, Electron. Lett., Vol. 38, 13081309, Oct. 24, 2002.