Lumped circuit model analysis of meander line antennas

The past decade has seen phenomenal advances in portable electronics technology like mobile phones, RFID tags and MP3 players. This has led to the development of System in Package (SiP) which combines all the necessary components into a single package. Miniaturization of RF circuit technology has resulted in the need for miniaturized antennas. Meander line antennas are widely used in applications where compactness and miniaturization are key objectives. Although this antenna has been widely used, yet no simple analytical model except those using complicated numerical techniques is available. In this paper, we present a simple analytical model to calculate the resonant frequency of the antenna employing a lumped equivalent circuit model. Circuit response of a typical meander line antenna using our model has been compared with simulated antenna response using Method of Moments based simulator IE3D with good agreement, thereby validating our approach.