A Review of Antennas for Wireless Communication Devices Sunakshi Puri 1 , Kiranpreet Kaur 1 , and Naveen Kumar 2 1 Electronics & Communication Department, Baba Banda Singh Bahadur Engineering College, Punjab, India 2 Electronics & Communication Department, Universal Inst. of Engineering & Technology, Punjab, India Email: sunakshi_86@yahoo.co.in, kiranpreet.kaur@bbsbec.edu.in, chd.naveen@gmail.com Abstract —The extensive demand for mobile communication and information exchange through wireless devices has lead to major achievements in antenna designing. The purpose of the paper is to give a frame of reference, understanding, and overview of antennas used in wireless communication devices. In this paper we will be discussing various antennas, their advantages and drawbacks. Also a brief framework of comparisons between various antennas is presented on the basis of various parameters. This paper also summarizes the benefits and use of PIFA for USB dongle to cover the WiMAX bands. Index Terms—PIFA, USB dongle, WiMAX, antennas I. INTRODUCTION Wireless communication have progressed so fast in recent years, it requires small equipments supporting multiband communication. As an essential part of the communication system, antenna is one of the most significant design issues. As we concern about small equipments we require antennas which are small in size and light in weight [1]. Due to its compact size Planner inverted-F antennas (PIFAs) are most suitable to be employed in wireless equipments. The major advantages of PIFA are its simple structure, easy fabrication and less manufacturing cost. PIFA is a promising antenna for the future technology due to adjustability of its structure [2]. PIFA structure is widely used for internal mobile handset antenna. But its narrow bandwidth makes it difficult for it to be used as multiband antenna. So researchers have analyzed, designed and tested several techniques through which multiband operation can be achieved from PIFA structure. A multiband antenna utilized in a mobile communication system can operate at distinct frequency band. Presently, the mobile communication system uses frequency bands such as GSM 850 (824-894MHz), GSM 900 (890-960MHz), GSM 1900 (1850-1990MHz), UMTS (1920-2170MHz), Bluetooth (2.4-2.48GHz) and WLAN (5.16-5.5GHz) [3]. WiMAX is designed in such a manner that it supports 30 to 40Mbps data rates. WiMAX has three licensed spectrum profiles i.e. low band, middle band and high band. Low band has frequency ranging Manuscript received August 5, 2013; revised January 12, 2014. from 2.5 to 2.8GHz, the middle band has frequency ranging from 3.2 to 3.8GHz and high band has 5.2 to 5.8GHz. USB can provide connection to WiMAX via a device called dongle. Universal Serial Bus (USB) dongles are used for providing plug-and-play functionality in devices such as laptops. Future wireless USB dongles should have capability of accommodating high data rates to provide various multimedia services. By using two printed Dual-band PIFAs, a Dual-band Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) antenna can be made in order to implement 4G USB Dongle application [4]-[6]. A vast range of application uses PIFA as their antenna element including wearable devices, wireless sensors, RFID and UWB systems with adaptive antennas covering an available wide frequency band of GSM 850 (824- 890MHz), GSM 900 (890-960MHz), DCS/GSM 1800 (1710-1880MHz), WiBro (2.300-2.4GHz), Bluetooth (2.4-2.48GHz), and UMTS. II. WIDEBAND ANTENNAS Wideband antenna has remarkable ability to be designed for wireless and radio frequency electronics. Wideband antennas are different from broadband antennas, as in wideband antennas pass band is large, but radiation pattern and antenna gain may not be the same over the pass band. Wideband antennas need larger space to be installed as compared to multiband antennas. Microstrip patch antenna comes under the category of wideband antennas and they are also known as printed antennas. Fig. 1 shows a basic microstrip antenna. The advantages like light in weight, low cost and providing both linear and circular polarization makes them popular [2]. Using it with its original configuration, this type of antenna has a narrow bandwidth and low gain. But by using a suitable technique such as stacked patch i.e. making the substrate thick or using a low permittivity substrate its bandwidth can be widened. But increase in substrate thickness over a limit may lead to decrease in efficiency of microstrip antennas. The increase in substrate thickness also results in increase in probe length. Increase in probe length also increases probe inductance which may lead to impedance matching problems. 199 International Journal of Electronics and Electrical Engineering Vol. 2, No. 3, September, 2014 ©2014 Engineering and Technology Publishing doi: 10.12720/ijeee.2.3.199-201