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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 5, MAY 2005

Optimization of PIFA-IFA Combination in Handset

Antenna Designs
Zhan Li and Yahya Rahmat-Samii, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractAs commercial needs have expanded the functions

of the wireless cellular handsets, multiantenna development in
one handset has become more and more common. This paper
addresses a multiantenna solution for the wireless handset application. A planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) was designed
as the main antenna of the handset to cover the 800 MHz band
(824 MHz894 MHz) and the 1900 MHz band (1850 MHz1990
MHz). A side-mounted inverted F antenna (IFA) was designed
as the 1575.42 MHz global positioning system (GPS) antenna. The
location of the feed/ground pins of both antennas affected not only
the total antenna efficiency, but also the polarization of the GPS
IFA. The length of the GPS IFA affected the isolation between the
two antennas and the specific absorption rate (SAR) of the PIFA at
the 1900 MHz band. A three-dimensional efficiency measurement
of the prototypes in both free space and against-head position will
be presented. Measurement of SAR and its distribution will also
be presented to demonstrate the impact of the IFA on the near
field of the PIFA.
Index TermsDual-band, global positioning system (GPS), inverted F antenna (IFA), planar inverted F antenna (PIFA),
specific absorption rate (SAR), wireless handset.

Fig. 1. Configuration of the antenna model 1. The patch size is 26 mm by 34

mm. The ground plane size is 98 mm by 34 mm. The substrate height is 10 mm
with a dielectric constant of 2.25. The GPS IFA is 4 mm below the patch. The
strip width of the IFA is 2 mm. The J-slot is 2 mm wide, 21 mm long in
direction and 12 mm long in direction.

I. INTRODUCTION

INCE cellular phone service was introduced commercially,

cellular antenna design for the handset has become very
active [1], [2]. However, in the current wireless industry, the
handset is no longer a voice-only mobile unit. Noncellular antennas have received more and more attention as was required
for other new applications associated with the handset. For example, Enhanced 911 (E911) service for locating wireless users
has been mandatory in the U.S. handset market since the year
2003 by the Federal communication Commission (FCC) [3]. In
some handsets, E911 has been accomplished by using global positioning system (GPS) technology, which requires a small GPS
antenna to be integrated into the handset. Unlike the ordinary
GPS service, which provides a map on the screen to identify
the current location, E911 service enables the wireless carriers,
dispatchers and local phone companies to pinpoint the mobile
callers who are on the emergency 911 calls. Blue-tooth (BT)
have also become quite popular because of its convenience to
users, which again requires the handset to have a built-in BT antenna. Recently, the FCC has also opened part of the frequency
spectrum for digital TV applications and as a result, it has been

Manuscript received July 8, 2004; revised November 3, 2004.

Z. Li is with the University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
90095-1594 USA and also with Nokia, Incorporated, San Diego, CA 92131
USA (e-mail: zhan.li@nokia.com).
Y. Rahmat-Samii is with the University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1594 USA (e-mail: rahmat@ee.ucla.edu, www.ee.ucla.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2005.846807

Fig. 2. Effect of GPS IFA feed/ground location on polarization; patterns were

measured at - plane.

XZ

projected that many handset manufactures will integrate the TV

function into new handsets in the near future. To meet the multifunction capability of the handsets, multiantenna integration
has become the trend for the handset development.
However, it has also been projected that multiantenna integration will face a major challenge, namely the coupling between the various antennas due to the close proximity from the
small size of the handset compared to the wavelengths involved.
The antenna efficiency will also be greatly affected by the reduced isolation between each of the antennas. Some handsets
have a combination of two antennas for the cellular bands for
enhanced coverage, and are called dual-antenna modules. The
most common used dual-antenna modules are whip/stubby and

0018-926X/$20.00 2005 IEEE

LI AND RAHMAT-SAMII: OPTIMIZATION OF PIFA-IFA COMBINATION IN HANDSET ANTENNA DESIGNS

COMPARISON

OF

TABLE I
PIFA/IFA MODULE WITH DIFFERENT FEED/GROUND LOCATION (THE EFFICIENCY NUMBERS WERE COMPUTED
THE CENTER FREQUENCY OF EACH BAND)

whip/planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) combinations, where

in both cases, specially designed decoupling matching circuits
are used to deactivate the whip when retracted [4]. When a GPS
antenna is also integrated into the design, and since the GPS
band (1575.42 MHz) is close to the 1900 MHz band, the coupling must be confronted between the cellular antennas and the
GPS antenna. With the addition of a BT antenna (2.4 GHz) and a
digital TV antenna (470770 MHz), even more severe coupling
problems can be expected and will also have to be confronted.
As PIFAs [5], [6] have been used extensively in the current
handset designs due to their low cost and compact size, adding
a side mounted GPS inverted F antenna (IFA) to the PIFA
module is cost effective from a manufacturing point of view
[7]. A ceramic GPS antenna is another option for GPS solution. However, it is more expensive than the integrated IFA and
it requires a fairly large amount of space on the printed wiring
board (PWB) in the handset. Designing a tri-band PIFA to include the GPS band [8] may be undesirable because the system
would need a tri-plexer (for a dual band system) or an electrical
RF switch to separate the GPS signal from the cellular signals.
Either a tri-plexer or a switch introduces an insertion loss of at
least 0.5 dB to the GPS band in the system. Although a large
amount of in-depth PIFA study [9], [10] is available in the literature, studies of PIFA/IFA combinations to cover GPS solution
are not easily found.
Antenna performance in the close vicinity to the human body
has always been a topic of high interest due to safety and litigation concerns. In the handset industry, specific absorption
rate (SAR) is used as the indication of the maximum electro-

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AT

Fig. 3. Isolation of antenna model 1.

magnetic (EM) radiation the human body could possibly absorb

with the handset operating at maximum transmitting power. In
the United States, FCC sets the standard to be 1.6 mW/g averaged over 1 g of tissue. As cellular markets demand more efficient devices to get the same cellular performance with the
least amount of EM radiation, it has become more important
to reduce the SAR during the antenna design process. However,
the antenna efficiency and other characteristics have been shown
to be significantly affected by the presence of human body [5],
[11][13]. Parasitic metal elements have been used effectively to
alter the antenna near field distribution [14] and therefore lower
the SAR of the handset [15]. Based on this idea, besides using
the IFA as the GPS antenna, we could also design it to be an ef-

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Fig. 4.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 5, MAY 2005

Radiation patterns of the PIFA in Model 1 at X -Z plane, E .

fective parasitic element to change the SAR. But careful design

practices must take into account antenna efficiency and other
characteristics to maintain acceptable cellular performance.
This paper provides a practical design of PIFA/IFA combination module that covered the cellular bands at 800 MHz, 1900
MHz, and the GPS band. First, five antenna model candidates
were simulated in Ansoft HFSS. The feed/ground locations of
each model are different between each other. The total efficiencies and the IFA polarizations were compared. A prototype of
the antenna model with the optimum performance was selected
and then fabricated. Measurement results were used to validate
the simulation results. Antenna pattern measurements of GPS
in RHCP were conducted using a RHCP spiral source antenna.
Then, various lengths of the selected IFA were investigated. An
optimum length was shown to be achievable to improve the isolation between a PIFA and an IFA in a specific frequency band.
Three-dimensional efficiency measurements were made in both
free space and in an against-head position. An FCC specified
phantom head was used in the efficiency measurement. In the
end, the SAR was also measured to demonstrate the IFA impact on the PIFA in the near field. The SAR measurements were
done with the standard Dosimetric Assessment System (DASY
4 system) [13]. Human hand also impacts the handset antenna
[5], since FCC does not require any related test; hand effect was
not studied in this paper.
II. LOCATION OF THE FEED/GROUND PINS OF THE PIFA AND
THE IFA
One configuration of the PIFA/IFA model is shown in Fig. 1.
A dual-band dielectric-loaded PIFA was designed to cover the
800 MHz band and the 1900 MHz band. A GPS IFA is mounted
on the side of the dielectric. As a simple model of the plastic
parts between the antenna and the circuit board inside the
handset, the dielectric substrate also combines the PIFA and the
IFA together into one antenna module. A simple and efficient
J-shaped slot was used to achieve the dual-band tuning. Coaxial
feeds were used for both antennas in the simulation. Also, to

Fig. 5. Radiation patterns of the GPS IFA in model 1 at X -Z plane, measured

with a RHCP spiral source antenna.

simplify the model and address the coupling problem between

the PIFA and the IFA, some other electrical components such
as the battery and the shield cans are not included.
In this dual-antenna model, the question was how to choose
the feed/ground locations for both antennas? For the PIFA, the
antenna efficiency and the bandwidth were the driving factors.
While for the GPS IFA, besides the efficiency, the polarization
had to be taken into account. As is well know, GPS signals from
satellites are right handed circular polarized (RHCP). To polarization match a satellite signal, RHCP in the antenna front direction ( direction in Fig. 1) is necessary. Although IFA itself is a
linear antenna, when it excites the currents on the ground plane,
the whole structure shows some circular polarization (CP) characteristics. Whether it is dominantly left-handed or dominantly
right-handed polarization will depend on the feed/ground location of the GPS antenna. Also, before choosing the feed/ground

LI AND RAHMAT-SAMII: OPTIMIZATION OF PIFA-IFA COMBINATION IN HANDSET ANTENNA DESIGNS

Fig. 6.

Matching of the dual band PIFA in the PIFA/IFA combination.

Fig. 7.

Matching of the IFA in the PIFA/IFA combination.

locations, the distance between the feed and the ground was
fixed at 6 mm for the PIFA, 2.5 mm for the IFA. Reasonable
bandwidth could be achieved for both antennas with such distances.
value
It was demonstrated in [16] that maintaining the
, where
is the bandwidth), the antenna ef(
ficiency will get higher as the antenna effective size gets larger.
was quite limited, so in order
For the PIFA, the achievable
to get a larger effective size, the feed and ground pins had to be
put on the top of the patch as shown in Fig. 1. Only in this way,
the ground plane could have been fully excited to achieve the
maximum antenna effective size. For the IFA, since the bandwidth requirement in the GPS band was not as critical, the location of the feed and ground pins was slightly more flexible. The
antenna efficiency is defined in [17] as

where
is the reflection efficiency,
is the conduction effiis the dielectric efficiency. In the dual-antenna
ciency and

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module, the isolation between the two antennas had to be included. Then the efficiency becomes

where is the isolation efficiency,

and
represents the
parameters if the dual-antenna model was viewed as a two-port
increases
network. The above equation shows that reducing
the total efficiency. Based on the above criteria, antenna model
1 was chosen out of the five antenna model candidates listed in
Table I. Antenna model 5 was symmetric to model 1 but this
configuration had LHCP in the front direction. Fig. 2 shows
the measured radiation patterns of antenna model 1 and 5. The
source antenna was a RHCP spiral antenna. It is clear that when
the feed and ground pins were on the left side, a null appeared
in the direction in the radiation pattern. If the handset was put
against the user head, the satellite signals come from the
direction and toward the user head. Similarly, the other antenna
models symmetric to model 2 through 4 were eliminated because of the polarization mismatch. Table I also clearly shows
that the isolation between the two antennas directly affected the
total efficiency.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 5, MAY 2005

Fig. 8. Isolation between the IFA and the PIFA in the PIFA/IFA combination.

Fig. 9. Measured 3-D efficiency in free space.

A prototype of antenna model 1 was fabricated and measured.

was compared to the simulation in Fig. 3. The plot shows
The
they are quite close except at the 1900 MHz band, where there
is more loss due to the coaxial cable in the real measurement.
In Figs. 4 and 5, the measured radiation patterns also matched
the simulation quite well. Efficiency was not compared because
the three-dimensional efficiency measurement was decided to be
too difficult to calibrate in the available chamber for an absolute
measurement. A relative efficiency between various IFA lengths
was selected since a relative comparison would be done more
easily. Another reason that a comparison between measured and
simulated data was not done is that the loss in the dielectric and
cables was determined to be uncertain for a simulation.
III. OPTIMIZATION OF THE IFA LENGTH
Once the locations of the feed and ground pins of both
antennas were fixed, to further optimize the efficiency of the
design, GPS IFAs of three different lengths were tuned to

1575 MHz for comparison. Since the IFA is a narrow-band

antenna, with chip inductor-capacitor (LC) components, it was
easily tuned to the desired frequency for each length. As the
IFA length changed, the coupling between the PIFA and the
IFA was expected to change and affect the efficiency of both
antennas.
Starting from the regular GPS IFA without any matching,
the short IFA was made 5 mm shorter while the long IFA
was made 4 mm longer. Both the short IFA and the long IFA
were matched to 1575 MHz with LC circuits. The return loss
of the PIFA and the IFA are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. The
original PIFA with no IFA (referred to as a PIFA-only) is
also shown in Fig. 6 as the reference antenna. Clearly, both
the PIFAs and the IFAs are matched well. Fig. 8 shows the
isolation curves. It was observed in Fig. 7 that as the IFA
became shorter, a second resonance started to approach the
1900 MHz band. This is also reflected in Fig. 8 as the isolation
became worse at about 2.1 GHz for the short IFA case. On
the other band, as the IFA became longer,

LI AND RAHMAT-SAMII: OPTIMIZATION OF PIFA-IFA COMBINATION IN HANDSET ANTENNA DESIGNS

Fig. 10.

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Measured 3-D efficiency against the phantom head.

Fig. 11. SAR test positions. Officially, SAR will be tested with the handset at both positions, namely cheek position and tilted position. (a) Touching cheek
position, the handset will touch the head at two spots, one is at the cheek, the other is at the ear. (b) 15 tilt position, rotate 15 from cheek position.

a second resonance started to approach the 800 MHz band

and that lead to worse isolation for the long IFA case in the
800 MHz band. A notch was also observed between the GPS
band and the 1900 MHz band in Fig. 8, which moved toward
the GPS band as the IFA became longer. If designed properly,
it was observed that this notch could be moved right to 1575
MHz and the best isolation could be achieved for the GPS

band. However, this would be at the price of sacrificing the

isolation in the 800 MHz band.
Accordingly, the measured three-dimensional (3-D) efficiencies in both free space and with the antenna model against a
phantom head are shown in Figs. 9 and 10. In the 800 MHz
band, as the IFA became shorter, the isolation and the PIFA
efficiency both improved. The efficiency of the PIFA with the

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 5, MAY 2005

TABLE II
SAR MEASUREMENT (REFERENCE TO THE MEASUREMENT OF THE PIFA ONLY CASE)

Fig. 12. Area scan of the SAR measurement at 800 MHz band (a) PIFA only,
(b) PIFA w/short IFA, (c) PIFA w/regular IFA, (d) PIFA w/long IFA.

Fig. 13. Area scan of the SAR measurement at 1900 MHz band (a) PIFA only,
(b) PIFA w/short IFA, (c) PIFA w/regular IFA, (d) PIFA w/long IFA.

short IFA was very close to the efficiency of the PIFA-only case.
In the GPS band, the efficiencies of both the long IFA and the
short IFA were lower than the efficiency of the regular IFA. The
major reason was the loss caused by the LC matching components. However, the long IFA efficiency was much closer to the
regular IFA because the isolation of the long IFA was much
). In the 1900 MHz band, the situation
higher (about
was more complicated. Since the transmitting band (18501910
MHz) of the PIFA with the short IFA fell into the notch, the
isolation was therefore much higher than the other two cases,
which resulted in improved efficiency. While the receiving band
(19301990 MHz) was impacted by the second resonance as
discussed above, the efficiency reduced very quickly. The PIFA
with the long IFA showed improved efficiency over the PIFA
with the regular IFA because the isolation is higher.
As a summary, depending on the design requirement, to optimize the PIFA at the 800 MHz band, the short IFA was preferred. To optimize the PIFA at the 1900 MHz band, the long
IFA was chosen. In the GPS band, the longer IFA showed improved isolation but the efficiency was impacted by the loss of
the matching circuits. Higher Q LC components with less resistance could have been used for matching to improve the GPS
efficiency but were not available.

IV. SAR IMPACT

It is obvious that in Fig. 10, at the 1900 MHz band, the efficiency of all three cases at against-head position are better than
that of the PIFA-only case. This indicates that the IFA actually
improves the PIFAs efficiency at the 1900 MHz band when the
antenna is put besides the head. At the 800 MHz band, there
is no such impact from the IFA. How will this affect the SAR
value? SAR is defined as:

where is the conductivity of the medium (usually the human

body), is the density and is the peak electric field. The impact on SAR from the IFAs length will directly affect the choice
of the IFA design.
Typically, SAR is measured at two positions, namely the
cheek position and the tilted position, as shown in Fig. 11.
Table II shows the relative SAR measurement results at the
cheek position. SAR at the tilted position was also measured
but the values are lower for all the cases than the SAR values
at the cheek position. During the SAR measurement, the whole

LI AND RAHMAT-SAMII: OPTIMIZATION OF PIFA-IFA COMBINATION IN HANDSET ANTENNA DESIGNS

antenna model was put into a plastic housing to simulate the

handset chassis, which provides 8 mm separation between the
antenna ground plane and the earpiece of the SAR phantom
head. A prototype transmitter engine was also integrated to
eliminate the coaxial cable. The data is referenced to the
measurement of the PIFA only case, either as a percentage
increase or decrease. Also, the efficiency difference was taken
into account to adjust the transmitting power. For example, if
the efficiency at a certain frequency was 0.5 dB lower than
the reference, then 0.5 dB higher transmitting power was used
for the SAR measurement. Like in reality, the SAR was only
measured at the transmitting band (824849 MHz at 800 MHz
band, 18501910 MHz at 1900 MHz band). Also, 824, 836,
and 849 MHz were chosen for measurement to represent the
low, middle and high frequency in the 800 MHz transmitting
band. At the 1900 MHz band, 1850, 1880 , and 1910 MHz were
chosen.
As expected, for all the cases, little SAR difference is observed at the 800 MHz band in Table II. Fig. 12 shows the hot
spots (the square area, where the field is concentrated) and the
SAR distributions by the area scan (user defined area for field
strength scan to find the hot spot). Actual SAR value will be
obtained by the zoom scan in the hot spot. It is obvious that all
the cases are very similar. However, at the 1900 MHz band, one
observes surprisingly different values in Table II. Compared to
the PIFA-only case, the PIFA with the short IFA shows an average of 20% SAR increase. On the other hand, for the cases of
the long and regular IFAs, the SAR values are 30% lower. This
indicates that, with enough length, the IFA performed the role
of the parasitic element to alter the near-field distribution and to
provide SAR reduction. Two hot spots are observed in the SAR
distribution in Fig. 13. The dark dots inside the hot spots were
automatically located by the measurement system as long as the
field strength of the second hot spot is within 2 dB differences
from the first hot spot. In (a) and (b), the hot spot near the ear is
much stronger than the other hot spot down to the cheek, which
indicates that all the field energy is concentrated near the ear hot
spot. While in the cases of (c) and (d), the energy is spread up
between the two hot spots, which results in the lower SAR.

V. CONCLUSION
A common challenge of optimally integrating multiple antennas in a handset arises rapidly in industry. This paper provides a full analysis of the antenna model of the PIFA/IFA combination. In this model, the efficiencies of both antennas are affected by the isolation between them. To optimize the design,
the feed/ground pins of both antennas have to be located carefully first to achieve better efficiency. At the same time, matched
polarization for the GPS IFA is also taken into account. Then by
tuning the IFA length, one could optimize the isolation between
the two antennas at the particular frequency band depending on
the design requirement. Finally, the effect on SAR value due to
the IFA length was also discussed. As long as the IFA is long
enough, it could lower the SAR by performing in a positive way
to alter the near field distribution of the PIFA at the 1900 MHz
band.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Dr. K. Li and Mr. R. Taylor for
their helpful comments.
REFERENCES
[1] Mobile Antenna Systems Handbook, 2nd ed., Fujimoto and J. R. James,
Eds., Artech House Inc., Norwood, MA, 2001.
[2] K. L. Wong, Planar Antennas for Wireless Communications. New
York: Wiley, 2003.
[3] FCC Report and Order,, Docket 94-102, 1996.
[4] Z. Li and Y. Rahmat-Samii, Whip-PIFA combination in wireless
handset application: A hybrid circuit model and full wave analysis, in
IEEE AP-S Int. Symp. Dig., vol. 3, 2004, pp. 27472750.
[5] M. A. Jensen and Y. Rahmat-Samii, EM interaction of handset antennas
and a human in personal communications, Proc. IEEE, vol. 83, no. 1,
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[6] T. Taga, Performance analysis of a build-in planar inverted F antenna
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[7] S. Eggleston and S. Lahti, Antenna transducer assembly, and an associated method therefor, U.S. Patent n 6 618 011, Sep. 9, 2003.
[8] R. Kronberger, H. Lindenmeier, L. Reiter, and J. Hopf, Multiband
planar inverted-F car antenna for mobile phone and GPS, in IEEE
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[9] M. A. Jensen and Y. Rahmat-Samii, Performance analysis of antennas
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[10] K. L. Virga and Y. Rahmat-Samii, Low-profile enhanced-bandwidth
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[11] R. G. Vaughan and N. L. Scott, Evaluation of antenna configurations for
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[13] N. Chavannes, R. Tay, N. Nikoloski, and N. Kuster, Suitability of
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[17] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory Analysis and Design. New York: Wiley,
1997.

Zhan Li was born in Nanjing, China. He received

the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering
from Nanjing University of Science and Technology,
in 1995 and 1998. He is currently working toward the
Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
His major research area is antenna designs for
wireless communication. During March 2001, he
also joined the CDMA Research and Development
Center of Nokia Incorporated, San Diego, CA, where
he is currently a Senior Antenna Designer. He has
presented several papers at Antenna Propagation Symposiums since 2000. His
recent research interest focuses on the multiantenna solution for the handset.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 5, MAY 2005

Yahya Rahmat-Samii (S73M75SM79F85)

received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
He was a Guest Professor with the Technical
University of Denmark (TUD) during summer 1986.
He was a Senior Research Scientist at NASAs
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, before joining the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1989.
Currently, he is a Distinguished Professor and the
Chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department, UCLA. He has also been a
Consultant to many aerospace companies. He has been Editor and Guest Editor
of many technical journals and book publication entities. He has authored and
coauthored more than 660 technical journal articles and conference papers
and has written 20 book chapters. He is the coauthor of Impedance Boundary
Conditions in Electromagnetics (Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis, 1995)
and Electromagnetic Optimization by Genetic Algorithms (New York: Wiley,
1999). He is also the holder of several patents. He has had pioneering research
contributions in diverse areas of electromagnetics, antennas, measurement
and diagnostics techniques, numerical and asymptotic methods, satellite and
personal communications, human/antenna interactions, frequency selective
surfaces, electromagnetic band-gap structures and the applications of the
genetic algorithms, etc., (visit http://www.antlab.ee.ucla.edu). On several
occasions, his work has made the cover of many magazines and has been
featured on several TV newscasts.
Dr. Rahmat-Samii is a Member of Sigma Xi, Eta Kappa Nu, Commissions
A, B, J, and K of the United States National Committee for the International
Union for Radio Science (USNC/URSI), Antennas Measurement Techniques
Association (AMTA), and the Electromagnetics Academy. He was elected as a
Fellow of the Institute of Advances in Engineering (IAE) in 1986. Since 1987,
he has been designated every three years as one of the Academy of Sciences
Research Council Representatives to the URSI General Assemblies held in various parts of the world. In 2001, he was elected as the Foreign Member of the
Royal Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. He was also a member
of UCLAs Graduate council for a period of three years. For his contributions,
he has received numerous NASA and JPL Certificates of Recognition. In 1984,
he received the coveted Henry Booker Award of the URSI which is given triennially to the Most Outstanding Young Radio Scientist in North America. In
1992 and 1995, he was the recipient of the Best Application Paper Prize Award
(Wheeler Award) for papers published in the 1991 and 1993 IEEE ANTENNAS
AND PROPAGATION. In 1999, he was the recipient of the University of Illinois
ECE Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2000, he was the recipient of IEEE Third
Millennium Medal and AMTA Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2001, he
was the recipient of the Honorary Doctorate in physics from the University of
Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He was also a Member of the Strategic Planning and Review Committee (SPARC) of the IEEE. He was the IEEE AP-S Los
Angeles Chapter Chairman (19871989) and his chapter won the Best Chapter
Awards in two consecutive years. He was the elected 1995 President and 1994
Vice-President of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He was one of
the Directors and Vice President of the Antennas Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA) for three years. He was appointed an IEEE Antennas and
Propagation Society Distinguished Lecturer and presented lectures internationally. He is listed in Whos Who in America, Whos Who in Frontiers of Science
and Technology, and Whos Who in Engineering. He is the designer of the IEEE
Antennas and Propagation Society logo that is displayed on all IEEE ANTENNAS
AND PROPAGATION publications.