Endfire Circularly Polarized Antenna for Satellite Communication in Metal-Rimmed Mobile Phones

This invited paper focuses on metal-rimmed mobile phone antenna with an endfire circularly polarized (CP) beam for satellite communication, which is a hot topic of research in mobile terminal antennas. This paper consists of 3 parts: The first part discusses some key technical challenges and recent developments in endfire CP mobile phone antennas; the second part presents a novel design of endfire CP antenna suitable for metal-rimmed mobile phones. By integrating two slot antennas operating in and modes, respectively, into the metal rim, two orthogonal E-field components along the two edges of the front surface are achieved. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed antenna is able to produce a CP beam with a peak gain of 1.07 dBic at 2.1GHz within 30° along the endfire direction. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first report of a simple endfire CP antenna design for metal-rimmed mobile phones without utilizing any metal cavity or shorted parallel patches, which are complicated and bulky. This design is promising for applications in next-generation mobile terminals supporting satellite communication. The final part presents a conclusion and discusses future development trends of satellite communication mobile phone antennas.