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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2016.2629619, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters

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Printed Wideband Antenna for LTE Band

Automotive Applications
Andrea Michel, Member, IEEE, Paolo Nepa, Member, IEEE, Michele Gallo, Ilenia Moro, Andrea Polo
Filisan, Daniel Zamberlan

their position in a compact shark-fin module which guarantees

Abstract— A low-profile printed antenna is here proposed for optimum performance even in presence of other antennas for
vehicular communications, covering wireless standards in a wide different services.
frequency range (698-2690 MHz) that includes the LTE (Long It is worth noting that achieving antenna requirements could
Term Evolution) band. Multiple monopole antennas are printed
be relatively easy for high-frequency applications (beyond
on the same compact substrate easily embeddable under a shark-
fin cover, and they are properly optimized to resonate in the 1GHz) [4], since the physical size of resonant radiating
considered frequency band. A tapered profile and a thin slot have elements is compatible with the available space inside the
been introduced to achieve a good impedance matching, device housing. On the other hand, miniaturization techniques
especially at the higher frequencies. Numerical simulations and are required to integrate antennas for low-frequency
measurement results on a prototype are here reported in terms of applications (below 1GHz) [5].
reflection coefficient, gain and radiation pattern. The proposed
Such issues are recently discussed in the design of antennas
wideband antenna is suitable for other wireless scenarios in
addition to the automotive industry. for LTE700 applications, especially in the automotive field
[6]-[14]. The design of antennas able to fulfill the application
Index Terms—Long Term Evolution, printed monopole, requirements in terms of gain and impedance matching in the
wideband antenna, vehicular communication antenna. entire LTE700 band is quite demanding.
Typically, patch antennas and monopole antennas printed
I. INTRODUCTION on 2D substrates are designed for automotive applications. In
[6]-[7] a compact monopole inspired by a wideband Vivaldi
I Nthe framework of mobile and automotive applications [1]
the number of infotainment communication and telematics
services is rapidly increasing. At the same time, the increase
antenna is presented. Moreover, to efficiently utilize the small
available space and to achieve better antenna performance, 3D
of wireless functionalities results in a growing complexity of LTE antennas have been proposed [8]-[11]. In [8]-[9] an
dedicated electronic systems, networks, and architectures, efficient 3D Nefer-antenna is shown which is able to cover the
since satellite and terrestrial wireless applications cover a wide entire LTE band without applying any matching network.
range of frequencies [2]. Several antennas are integrated in However, the effect of other radiating elements close to the
different locations on a vehicle to satisfy different wireless LTE antenna has not been analyzed. In [10], a 3D antenna is
services requirements [1]. In some cases, integration is proposed for mobile, WLAN and C2C services in vehicular
particularly challenging because several antennas must be applications. Two printed substrates are mounted
accomodated into the same device, typically compact in size. perpendicularly to each other in order to exploit all the
That is, an antenna physical dimension is limited by the available space and leave a wide space empty for an
available volume of the device housing as well as by the independent GPS antenna. For a better utilization of the
presence of closeby radiating elements operating at different available mounting space and to improve the antenna
frequencies. In the automotive industry, a number of antennas decoupling in LTE multiple-antenna technology, an antenna
are typically placed together under a shark-fin plastic cover realized by Molded Interconnect Device (MID) Laser Direct
located onto the car rooftop. Thus, the antenna design and Structuring (LDS) is presented in [11]. There, two LTE
arrangement must be carefully optimized to limit the mutual antennas are designed on an automotive rooftop plastic
coupling between radiating structures, as discussed in [3], housing.
where four possible Dedicated Short Range Communications In this paper, a compact wideband antenna is proposed to
(DSRC, 5850-5925 MHz) antennas are studied to determine cover LTE, GSM and UMTS bands (698-960 MHz, 1710-
2170 MHz, 2490-2690 MHz) as well as the WLAN (2400-
Manuscript received ??. 2485 MHz) band. Multiple-arm printed monopoles are
A. Michel (corresponding author) and P. Nepa are with the Department of designed on a low-cost and low-profile PCB to be installed on
Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy (phone:
+390502217671; fax: +390502217522; e-mail: the vehicle rooftop. Multi-arm monopoles have been used in
andrea.michel{p.nepa}@iet.unipi.it ). several wireless applications, as in [12]-[13]. In the proposed
M. Gallo, I Moro, A. Polo Filisan, and D. Zamberlan are with Calearo antenna, both the dominant and higher-order modes of a
Antenne S.p.A., via Bacchiglione 49, 36033 Isola Vicentina (VI), Italy (e-
mail: mgallo{imoro, apolofilisan, dzamberlan}@calearo.com) monopole antenna are exploited to get a wider operating
frequency band. Moreover, a tapered profile of the feeding

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network and a thin slot have been introduced for a fine tuning TABLE I
ANTENNA MAIN PARAMETERS
of the input impedance matching at higher frequencies.
Thanks to its compact size (25×76×1.53 mm3), the antenna is GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS (MM)
a good candidate for mobile applications, especially in the Parameter Value Parameter Value Parameter Value
automotive industry, and it may be also used for Multiple- ax1 2 bz2 4 cz2 30.4
Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems [14]. ax2 8 bz3 5 cz3 3

az1 4.5 bz4 16.3 cz4 3.4

II. ANTENNA DESIGN 1.2
az2 6 cx1 8 dx1
The antenna geometry is shown in Fig. 1, and its parameters cx2 dx2 2.5
az3 4 2.8
are listed in Table I. The proposed antenna has been designed
az4 49.3 cx3 3.8 dz1 5
on a 25×76 mm2 1.53-mm-thick FR-4 substrate (εr=4.3,
cx4 sx 18
tanδ=0.02). A 3.5×12.3 mm2 protrusion has been added to fix bx1 2 1.7
the vertical substrate to the horizontal ground plane (for bx2 8 cx5 3.6 sz 1
automotive applications, the latter could be represented by the bz1 4 cz1 8 gpz 2
metallic car rooftop). The microstrip feeding line and the
radiating elements are printed on the top layer of the substrate,
bow-tie monopole) to slightly shift the resonance toward a
while a small ground plane is printed on the bottom and
lower frequency.
electrically connected (soldered) to the horizontal ground
Monopole A and Monopole B are placed close to the central
plane.
Monopole C. They are characterized by a stepped top profile,
which provides a bandwidth enlargement around the resonant
frequency.
The three monopoles are connected together to an elliptical
printed structure directly fed by a microstrip line. The ellipse
main axis are 25mm and 5mm wide (Fig. 1a). To demonstrate
the effectiveness of the presence of such an elliptical structure,
in Fig. 2 the simulated reflection coefficient is shown as a
function of the frequency, with (solid line, i.e. final layout)
and without the tapering (dotted line). It is worth noting that
(a)
the tapered profile of this structure allows for a better input
impedance matching, especially at frequencies higher than
1700MHz.

Fig. 2. Simulated reflection coefficient of the proposed antenna with different

(b) (c)
feeding layouts, to highlight the effect of the tapered profile and slim slot.

In Fig. 3, the surface current distribution is shown at the

frequencies corresponding to the minima of the reflection
coefficient (see the final-layout curve in Fig. 2), i.e. at
(d) 700MHz, 900MHz, 1850MHz, 2450MHz and 2800MHz. As
Fig. 1. Antenna layout: (a) overall antenna size and detailed definition of the expected, each monopole resonates at different frequencies.
geometrical parameters of (b) Monopole A and Monopole B, (c) Monopole C, Generally, their lengths can be arbitrarily chosen in order to
and (d) feeding line and bottom part of the antenna. get resonances in the desired frequency bands. However, it
should be highlighted that the monopoles are very close to
The antenna consists of three monopoles (Fig. 1) with
each other, so the mutual coupling effects cannot be neglected.
different lengths to resonate at different frequencies. The
Thus, their length do not correspond exactly to the theoretical
central monopole (Monopole C) is tapered on the top (as a

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λ/4 value, but it has to be optimized by tuning the parameters

shown in Fig. 1. Moreover, to achieve the impedance
matching at the higher frequencies, higher-order modes on the
radiating elements are excited, as shown by the current
distributions in Fig. 3. This causes a slight tilt of the maximum
gain direction with respect to the horizontal plane, but an
almost omnidirectional radiation pattern is still guaranteed.

Fig. 5. Simulated (solid line) and measured (markers) gain of the proposed
antenna.

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Fig. 3. Surface current distribution (dBA/m) on the radiating elements at the
frequency of (a) 700MHz, (b) 900MHz, (c) 1850MHz), (d) 2450MHz, and (e)
2800MHz.

III. MEASUREMENTS
An antenna prototype has been fabricated (Fig. 4a) and
experimental tests have been carried out. In Fig. 4b, the
measured reflection coefficient is plotted, showing a good
agreement with the simulated results. (a) (b)

(c) (d)

(a) (b)
Fig. 4. (a) Picture of the fabricated prototype and (b) simulated and measured
reflection coefficient.

The prototype has been mounted at the center of a 1m-

diameter circular metallic plane to emulate the car roof effect.
The radiation patterns have been measured in the Calearo SG
3000F NF site [15] provided by Satimo. In Fig. 5, the
simulated and measured gain of the proposed antenna are
shown as a function of the frequency. Despite some
differences in the LTE2600 band, the simulated and measured (e) (f)
gains are in a good agreement and they are higher than 2dB in Fig. 6. Simulated (red solid line) and measured (black markers) normalized
radiation patterns in the azimuthal plane (XY plane in Fig. 1) at (a) 700MHz,
the entire operative frequency band (from 700MHz to (b) 900MHz, (c) 1850MHz, (d) 2000MHz, (e) 2450MHz, and (f) 2700MHz.
2700MHz). Moreover, an omnidirectional radiation pattern is
achieved in the azimuthal plane (Fig. 6), which is required for
automotive applications. The simulated and measured
radiation patterns in the elevation plane are also shown in Fig.
7, for different frequencies.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2016.2629619, IEEE
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank the entire Calearo Research Center
(Ce.R.Ca) team for the cooperation and support during the
prototype fabrication and characterization phases.

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