Multiband terminal and base-station antennas for mobile communications

There is a growing need for multiband terminal and base-station antennas to serve existing 1^st and 2^nd generation mobile communication systems and emerging 3^rd generation systems. This paper presents some dual band terminal antenna structures for which prototypes have been built for the AMPS/PCS bands used in the US. One of the structures consists of a printed track on a thin dielectric substrate, and this could possibly be extended to serve multiple bands (i.e. more than two). This could be important, for example, if one wanted to incorporate a GPS receiver for mobile location, without increasing the number of antennas on the handset. A potential configuration is then presented for a triple band base-station array antenna, where this could serve the GSM, DCS1800 and UMTS bands. In this case triple band base-station antennas are important since initially it is likely that 3^rd generation deployments will use existing 2^nd generation cell sites. Minimising the number of antennas at a given cell site will also minimise the visual impact of the site. A second important advantage is that a triple band antenna will help to reduce the installation costs at a base site