High performance tuners for handsets

Summary form only given, as follows. Impedance tuners are in evaluation within mobile handsets to improve performance, compensate for environmental influences, shrink antenna volumes and shorten design cycles. As a new component in the handset rf front-end designer´s toolkit, tuner specifications and value propositions are subjects of heated debate. This paper proposes a unified specification for a tuner component and then details the design and measured performance of an integrated tuner module against the specification.