Tunable antennas using MEMS switches for LTE mobile terminals

Two antenna designs, using MEMS switches for operating band reconfigurability are presented in this paper. The study has been carried out in the scope of ARTEMOS project, whose main target is to propose tunable architectures for future mobile terminals. For this purpose, two antenna designs to cover 700-960MHz and 1.7-2.7GHz are proposed., The switching between low-band (700-960MHz) and high-band (1.7-2.7GHz) is achieved by using MEMS switches. The first design consists of a driven monopole which is capacitively coupled to a parasitic strip, whose input impedance is changed by using a two-branch matching network and the branch selection is done using MEMS switches. The second design uses two driven strips, one of which is capacitively coupled to a parasitic strip. By choosing between the driven strips with the MEMS, the parasitic strip enabling the low-band coverage is excited (or not). In this way, operating band tunability is achieved between low-band and high-band.