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directly replace their standard NRI-TL counterparts (e.g., the zero-degree phase-shifting lines of [7] and the corresponding series power-dividers for making series-fed antenna arrays [8]).

REFERENCES
[1] G. V. Eleftheriades, A. K. Iyer, and P. C. Kremer, Planar negative refractive index media using periodically L-C loaded transmission lines, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 50, no. 12, pp. 27022712, Dec. 2002. [2] A. Sanada, C. Caloz, and T. Itoh, Characteristics of the composite right/left-handed transmission lines, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 6870, Feb. 2004. [3] A. Grbic and G. V. Eleftheriades, Experimental verication of backward- wave radiation from a negative refractive index material, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 92, no. 10, pp. 59305935, Nov. 2002. [4] A. Sanada, K. Murakami, S. Aso, H. Kubo, and I. Awai, A via-free microstrip left-handed transmission line, in IEEE MTT-S Microw. Symp. Digest, Jun. 2004, pp. 301304. [5] D. M. Pozar, Microwave Engineering, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley, 2005, pp. 371377. [6] A. Grbic and G. V. Eleftheriades, Periodic analysis of a 2-D negative-refractive-index transmission-line structure, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 26042611, Oct. 2003. [7] M. A. Antoniades and G. V. Eleftheriades, Compact linear lead/lag metamaterial phase shifters for broadband applications, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 103106, 2003. [8] M. A. Antoniades and G. V. Eleftheriades, A broadband series power divider using zero-degree metamaterial phase-shifting lines, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 15, pp. 808810, Nov. 2005.

Development of the Three-Dimensional Unconditionally Stable LOD-FDTD Method

Iftikhar Ahmed, Eng-Kee Chua, Er-Ping Li, and Zhizhang Chen

AbstractA three-dimensional unconditionally-stable locally-one-dimensional nite-difference time-domain (LOD-FDTD) method is proposed and is proved unconditionally stable analytically. In it, the number of equations to be computed is the same as that with the conventional three-dimensional alternating direction implicit FDTD (ADI-FDTD) but with reduced arithmetic operations. The reduction in arithmetic operations leads to approximately 20% less computational time in comparisons with the ADI-FDTD method. Index TermsAlternating direction implicit nite-difference time-domain (ADI-FDTD), Courant Friedrich Levy (CFL) limit, FDTD, locally-one-dimensional nite-difference time-domain (LOD-FDTD), unconditionally stable.

by numerical dispersion errors and Courant-Frederick-Levy (CFL) constraints. To reduce numerical dispersion errors, higher-order methods were developed, such as the multi-resolution time-domain (MRTD) method [2] and the pseudo-spectral time-domain (PSTD) [3] method. To overcome the CFL constraint, an alternating direction implicit FDTD (ADI-FDTD) [4], [5] method was proposed. To improve the accuracy, modied ADI-FDTD methods such as iterative ADI-FDTD [6] and error reduced ADI-FDTD [7] methods were developed. The iterative ADI-FDTD method is computationally more expensive than the conventional ADI-FDTD method, while the error reduced ADI-FDTD method takes slightly more computer resources than the conventional method. However, both methods have been found unconditionally stable only in the two-dimensional case, not the three-dimensional. Some other unconditionally stable techniques, such as Crank Nicolson FDTD (CN-FDTD) [8], and more recently, the locally-one-dimensional FDTD (LOD-FDTD) [9], have been proposed. The CN-FDTD method is more accurate than the ADI-FDTD method but much more expensive in terms of computational expenditures. The LOD-FDTD method has been mostly considered in the two-dimensional case except for the one reported in [10], which is a two-step approach but is complicated in its formulations. It has also been observed that the LOD-FDTD method in [9] can be made equivalent to the split-step approach SS1 [11]. Some extended split-step approaches are given in [12] and [13]. In addition, to solve open structure problems convolutional perfectly matched layers (CPML) [14] and perfectly matched layers (PML) [15], [16] have been developed for the LOD-FDTD method. In this paper, we propose a new LOD-FDTD that consists of three steps, as naturally dened by the general LOD procedure in the three spatial coordinate directions. The number of equations to be computed with the proposed LOD method is the same as that for the conventional ADI-FDTD methods but with fewer arithmetic operations; therefore, it is more efcient overall than the ADI-FDTD method in computational time. The stability of the proposed method is described both analytically and experimentally. Numerical results are presented in a comparison of analytical and conventional ADI-FDTD methods to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. II. FORMULATIONS Maxwells equations in isotropic and lossless media are given as

@H r 2 H = " @E @t r 2 E = 0 @t : @U = [A]U + [B]U + [C ]U @t

0 0 0 0 0 0

These equations can be expressed in the Cartesian coordinates as (1)

I. INTRODUCTION The nite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method [1] has been widely used in the eld of electrical engineering. However, its performance for geometrically ne and some high Q structures is limited
Manuscript received July 26, 2007; revised July 24, 2008. Current version published November 14, 2008. I. Ahmed, E.-K. Chua, and E.-P. Li are with the Electromagnetics System Department, Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore 117528, Singapore (e-mail: iahmed@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg; chuaek@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg; eplee@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg). Z. Chen is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 1Z1, Canada (e-mail: z.chen@dal. ca). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this communication are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2008.2005544

where

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 [A] = 0 0 0 @ 0 0 @x @ 0 0 0 @x 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 [B] = 0 @ 0 0 0 @y 0 0 0 @ 0 @y 0

0 0 @ 0 0 "@x @ 0 "@x 0 0 0 0 0 0 @ 0 0 "@y 0 0 0 @ 0 0 0 "@y 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

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0 0 [

0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0

@ "@z
0 0 0 0

@ 0 "@z
0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0

n+ Ez n+ Hx n+ Hz

0 ] =

@ @z
0

@ @z
0 0

and U = [Ex ; Ey ; Ez ; Hx ; Hy ; Hz ] . Note that [A]; [B ], and [C ] are sparse matrices whose elements are related to the spatial derivatives along the x; y and z directions, respectively. Application of (@U )=(@t)  (U n+1 0 U n )=(1t) and U n+(1=2)  n+1 + U n )=(2) to (1) leads to the so-called Crank-Nicolson formu(U lation
[ ]

n+ n+ x Ez 0 "t @H @y n+ t @Ez n+ Hx 0  @y n+ t @Ex n+ Hz  @y

1 2 1 2 + 1 2

n+ @Hx @y n+ @Ez @y n+ @Ex @y :

(12)

(13)

(14)

Sub-step 3
n+ n+1 Ex 0 "t Ex t n+ n+1 Ey Ey " t n+ n+1 Hx Hx  t n+ n+1 Hy 0  Hy
= 1 2 = + 1 2 = + 1 2 = 1 2

I 0 t A 0 t B 0 t C U n+1 tA tB I
1 2 [ ] 1 2 [ ] 1 2 [ ] = [ ] + 1 2 [ ] + 1 2 [

] +

t C U n:
[ ]

(2)

Equation (2) can be further approximated with the following formulations:

[ ]

I 0 tA
1 2 [ =

[ ] 1

[ ] +

I 0 tB tA I
1 2 [ [ ]

[ ] 1

[ ] +

I 0 t C U n+1 tB t C Un I
1 2 [ ] [ ] [ ] + 1 2 [ ]

n+1 @Hy @z n+1 @Hx @z n+1 @Ey @z n+1 @Ex @z

n+ @Hy @z n+ @Hx @z n+ @Ey @z n+ @Ex @z :

(15)

(16)

(17)

(18)

(3)

It can be computed into three sub time-steps as follows: Sub-step 1

[ ]

I 0 t A U n+
1 2 [ ]

[ ] +

t A U n:
[ ]

(4)

Sub-step 2
[ ]

I 0 t B U n+
1 2 [ ]

[ ] +

t B U n+ :
[ ]

(5)

Sub-step 3
[ ]

I 0 t C U n+1
1 2 [ ]

[ ] +

t C U n+ :
[ ]

(6)

The above equations are implicit but they can be reformulated into a linear system of equations with a tri-diagonal coefcient matrix. For instance, the equations in step 1 can be simplied as follows. Sub-step 1: Expressed in (19)(22) at the bottom of the following page. Note that in the above formulations, there are two implicit and two explicit equations; therefore there are 12 equations to be computed in total for the three sub-steps (i.e., a full time step), the same number as those of the conventional ADI-FDTD method. However, as shown in (19)(22), the right-hand sides of the equations have fewer terms than those with the ADI-FDTD method. As a result, the computational time with the proposed LOD method will be less. Table I presents the operation counts of the proposed method and the ADI-FDTD method. For the stability analysis, the procedure is similar to that presented in [4]. The equations in each step can be written in a matrix form in the spatial spectral domain. Sub-step 1: U n+(1=3) = 31 U n where
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

More specically, substitution of eld components into U reads Sub-step 1:

E E H

n+ y n+ z

n+ y

n+ Hz

E 0 "t t n Ez " t n Hy  t n Hz 0 
n y
1 2 + 1 2 + 1 2 1 2

n+ @Hz @x n+ @Hy @x n+ @Ez @x n+ @Ey @x

n @Hz @x n @Hy @x n @Ez @x n @Ey @x :

G Q

(7)

1=

0 0 0

0 0

G Q

2A 0 i"Q
G Q
0 0

i2A "Q
0 0

(8)

i2A Q

i2A Q
0

G Q

(9)

Sub-step 2: U n+(2)=(3) where

= 3

2 U n+(1)=(3)

(10)

G Q
0

0 1 0 0 0 0

0 0 0

i2A "Q
0 0 0

Sub-step 2
n+ Ex n+ Ex
1 2

t @H " @y

n+ z

@H @y

n+ z

2=

0 0

G Q i2A Q
0 0

G Q
0 0

2A 0 i"Q
0 1 0

(11)

i2A Q

G Q

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Sub-step 3: U n+1 where

= 33 U n+(2)=(3)
G Q

5 = x2 + iy2 6 = x2 0 iy2
i2A "Q

G Q

33 =

i2A Q

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

2A 0 iQ

0 0 2A 0 0 i"Q 1 0 G 0 Q 0 0 0 0

G Q

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 : 0 1
(23)

where

x1 =

By combining the above three step equations, one can get

U n+1 = 3U n

x Ry Rz 0 4 QR x Qy Qz x2 = z 0 Qx 0 Qy 0 Qz ) 0 Qx Qy Qz 0 2 (Qx Qy + Qx Qz + Qy Q Bx By Bz x Ry Rz + 4 QR x Qy Qz
here

z 0 Qx 0 Qy 0 Qz ) 0 Qx Qy Qz 0 2 (Qx Qy + Qx Qz + Qy Q Bx By Bz

where 3 = 31 32 33 and is a 6 2 6 matrix and is given in (24), shown at the bottom of the page, where

By using the Maple, eigenvalues of the 3 can be found as

2 2 2 x ; Q = 1 + Ay ; Q = 1 + Az : Qx = 1 + A y z " " "

1t sin kx1x ; Ay = 1t sin ky 1y Ax = 1 2 x 1y 2 1 t k z 1z Az = 1z sin 2 2 2 2 x ; G = 1 0 Ay ; G = 1 0 Az Gx = 1 0 A y z " " "

2 2 2 x ; R = Ay ; R = Az Rx = A y z " " " p y1 = g1 + g2 p y2 = g1 0 g2 and, see the equations g1 and g2 at the bottom of the following page. It is not difcult to show that j3 j = j4 j = j5 j = j6 j = 1; Therefore, the proposed LOD method is unconditionally stable.
III. NUMERICAL RESULTS For validation purposes, the proposed method was applied to a cavity having the dimensions of 9 2 6 2 15 mm3 . The cell sizes were taken as 1x = 1y = 1z = 0:6 mm. A point source of Dirac impulse

1 = 2 = 1 3 = x1 + iy1 4 = x1 0 iy1

1t2 Ey n+ 0 4" 1x2

n i + 1; j + 1; k Hz n i; j + 1 ; k 0 1t 2 2 = Ey n i 0 1; j + 1; k 2 "1x 0Hz 2 2

1t2 1 1 1t2 n+ n+ i + 1; j + 1 2 ; k + 1 + 2"1x2 Ey (i; j + 2 ; k) 0 4"1x2 Ey (i 0 1; j + 2 ; k)

n i + 1; j + 1 ; k Ey 1t 2 + 4" n n 1 2 1x 02Ey i; j + 1 2 ; k + Ey i 0 1; j + 2 ; k

(19)

1t2 Ez n+ 0 4" 1x2

n = Ez

1 + 1 + 1t2 Ez 1 0 1t2 Ez n+ n+ i + 1; j; k + 2 i; j; k + i 0 1; j; k + 1 2"1x2 2 4"1x2 2 n n 1 1 1 H i + E i + 1 ; j; k + ; j; k + 1t 1t y z 2 2 2 i; j; k + 1 n i 0 1 ; j; k + 1 + 4"1x2 02E n i; j; k + 1 + E n i 0 1; j; k + 1 2 + "1x 0Hy z z 2 2 2 2

n+ n+ 1 ; j; k + 1 = H n i + 1 ; j; k + 1 + 1t Ez i + 1; j; k + 1 0 Ez i; j; k + 1 2 2 i+ 2 y n i + 1; j; k + 1 0 E n i; j; k + 1 2 2 2 21x +Ez z 2 2 n+ n+ 1 ; j + 1 ; k = H n i + 1 ; j + 1 ; k 0 1t Ey i + 1; j + 1 ; k 0 Ey (i; j + 1 2 2 ; k) : i+ 2 z n n 1 2 2 2 21x +Ey i + 1; j + 2 ; k 0 Ey i; j + 1 ; 2 k G G Q Q

(20)

n+ Hy

(21)

n+ Hz

(22)

3=

i2G A Q Q i2A Q

0 0 0

4G A A 0 "Q Q Q
G G Q Q

2G A 0 iQ Q A A A 0 i8"Q Q Q i2A A Q Q

4A A "Q Q 4 A A G 0 "Q Q Q G G Q Q 2A A A 0 iQ Q Q 2A G 0 iQ Q

2G A 0 i"Q Q 2A 0 i"Q G G Q Q

0 0

i2G A "Q Q i8A A A " Q Q Q 2A G 0 i"Q Q 4A A G 0 "Q Q Q G G Q Q

i2G A G "Q Q Q i2A G "Q Q

4A A "Q Q 0 4G A A

(24)

"Q Q Q G G Q Q

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TABLE I COMPARISON BETWEEN 3D LOD-FDTD AND ADI-FDTD IN ARITHMETIC OPERATION COUNTS

Fig. 1. Relative error with respect to CFLN.

TABLE II COMPARISON OF RESULTS OF THE ADI-FDTD METHOD WITH THE PROPOSED LOD-FDTD METHOD

IV. CONCLUSION In this paper, an unconditionally-stable three-step three-dimensional LOD-FDTD method has been developed and compared with analytical and ADI-FDTD methods. Its unconditional stability is proved analytically. It is found that the LOD-FDTD method has the same number of equations to be computed as that of the ADI-FDTD method. However, in each equation, fewer arithmetic operations are required, resulting in overall less simulation time. Our numerical experiments show that the proposed LOD method is approximately 20% faster than the ADIFDTD method, and at the same time, both methods present the same accuracy. In other words, the proposed method can be considered a signicant step forward in improving the efciency of the unconditionally stable nite-difference time-domain schemes.

was placed at (8, 6, 10) and the measurement point was chosen at (8, 6, 20). The computed resonant frequencies for different modes are shown in Table II in a comparison with analytical solutions and those obtained with the conventional ADI-FDTD methods. As can be seen, both the proposed LOD FDTD and the ADI-FDTD have approximately the same relative errors. The number of iterations was taken to be 8000. However, in terms of computational expenditure, the two methods are different; the proposed method took the simulation time of 20 seconds and memory of 1.336 MB, while the ADI-FDTD method took 25 seconds and 1.336 MB. In other words, both methods utilized the same amount of memory but LOD-FDTD is approximately 20% faster than the ADI-FDTD method. The computer used for simulation was Dell Pentium VI with 256 MB RAM, and the computer program was developed with C++. Fig. 1 shows the relative errors of the ADI-FDTD and the LODFDTD with respect to CFLN (CFL number) that is dened as ratio of the time step used to CFL time limit for the conventional FDTD method. The relative error was calculated for TE101 mode. From this plot, one can see that both methods have the same relative errors. In spite of this, as indicated above, the proposed LOD FDTD method is less computationally intensive and thus more computational-time efcient.

REFERENCES
[1] A. Taove, Computational Electrodynamics: The Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method. Boston, MA: Artech House, 2005. [2] M. Krumpholz and L. P. B. Katehi, MRTD: New time domain schemes based on multiresolution analysis, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 555571, Apr. 1996. [3] Q. H. Liu, The PSTD-algorithm: A time-domain method requiring only two cells per wavelength, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 158165, June 1997. [4] F. Zheng, Z. Chen, and J. Zhang, A nite-difference time-domain method without the Courant stability conditions, IEEE Microw. Guided Wave Lett., vol. 9, no. 11, pp. 441443, 1999. [5] T. Namiki, A new FDTD algorithm based on alternating-direction implicit method, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 47, no. 10, pp. 20032007, 1999. [6] S. Wang, F. L. Teixeira, and J. Chen, An iterative ADI-FDTD with reduced splitting error, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 9294, 2005. [7] I. Ahmed and Z. Chen, Error reduced ADI-FDTD methods, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 4, pp. 323325, 2005. [8] G. Sun and C. W. Trueman, Approximate Crank-Nicolson schemes for the 2-D nite difference time domain method for TEz waves, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 52, no. 11, pp. 29632972, 2004. [9] J. Shibayama, M. Muraki, J. Yamauchi, and H. Nakano, Efcient implicit FDTD algorithm based on locally one-dimensional scheme, Electron. Lett., vol. 41, no. 19, pp. 10461047, 2005.

g1

(Qx Qy Qz + Qx + Qy + Qz 0 Qx Qy 0 Qx Qz 0 Qy Qz ) 2 1 = 4 Q2 Q 2 Q2 (Qx Qy + Qx Qz + Qy Qz 0 Qx 0 Qy 0 Qz ) x y z ( Qx Qy Qz + Qx + Qy + Qz 0 Qx Qy 0 Qx Qz 0 Qy Qz 0 1) 0 16 = 08
Rx Ry Rz

g2

[2 (Qx Qy +

2 Q2 Q2 Qx y z Qx Qz Qy Qz 2 Q2 Q2 Qx y z

0 Qx 0 Qy 0 Qz ) 0 Qx Qy Qz ]

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[10] E. L. Tan, Unconditionally stable LOD-FDTD method for 3-D Maxwells equations, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 8587, 2007. [11] J. Lee and B. Fornberg, A split-step approach for the 3-D Maxwells equations, J. Comput. Appl. Math., vol. 158, pp. 484505, 2003. [12] L. Sumichrast, On the numerical properties of the ADI-FDTD and CNSS-FDTD method, in Proce. 12th IEEE Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conf., 2004, pp. 1922. [13] W. Fu and E. L. Tan, Compact higher-order split-step FDTD method, Electron. Lett., vol. 41, no. 7, pp. 397399, 2005. [14] I. Ahmed, E. P. Li, and K. Krohne, Convolutional perfectly matched layer for an unconditionally stable LOD-FDTD method, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 17, pp. 816818, 2007. [15] V. E. do Nascimento, B.-H. V. Borges, and F. L. Teixeira, Split-eld PML implementations for the unconditionally stable LOD-FDTD method, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 16, no. 7, pp. 398400, 2006. [16] O. Ramadan, Unsplit eld implicit PML algorithm for complex envelope dispersive LOD-FDTD simulations, Electron. Lett., vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 1718, 2007.

Internal Coupled-Fed Shorted Monopole Antenna for GSM850/900/1800/1900/UMTS Operation in the Laptop Computer
Chih-Hua Chang and Kin-Lu Wong

AbstractA simple shorted strip monopole with a coupling feed for penta-band WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network) operation in the laptop computer is presented. With the coupling feed, which effectively compensates for the large inductive reactance of the antenna, a dual-resonance excitation for the antennas lower band at about 1 GHz is achieved; the obtained bandwidth reaches 500 MHz, allowing the antenna to easily cover GSM850/900 operation. Also, a wide operating band is achieved for the antennas upper band at about 1.9 GHz with a bandwidth of 540 MHz, hence easily covering GSM1800/1900/UMTS operation. With two wide operating bands achieved, the antenna occupies a thickness of 5 mm only (not including the ground plane), making and a small area of 9 79 it very promising to be embedded inside the casing of the laptop computer as an internal WWAN antenna. The proposed antenna is studied in detail in this study.

mm

applications, however, the available designs are relatively few. In [10], an external strip-sleeve monopole for GSM850/1900 operation is studied, which is not suitable to operate as an internal laptop antenna. Recently, a dual-band open-loop antenna for GSM900/1800 operation [11] and a quad-band antenna with parasitic elements for GSM850/900/1800/1900 operation [12] in the laptop computer are demonstrated. Both of the two antennas in [11], [12] occupy a reasonable volume inside the laptop computer and are promising to operate as internal laptop antennas. A study on combining two internal antennas into a combo antenna with optimized isolation for GSM900/1800 WWAN and 2.4/5 GHz WLAN dual-network operation has also been reported [13]. Embedding the WWAN antenna in the USB (Universal Series Bus) dongle [14], [15] for the laptop computer to provide wireless internet access is also a promising alternative. These available antenna designs, however, cannot cover all the ve operating bands of GSM850/900/1800/1900/UMTS for WWAN operation. In this paper, we propose a simple shorted strip monopole with a coupling feed for penta-band WWAN operation in the laptop computer. The antenna occupies a reasonable volume (thickness 5 mm and area 9 2 79 mm2 , not including the ground plane) and is suitable to be employed in the narrow space between the top edge of the display panel and the casing of the laptop computer. The coupling feed contributes additional capacitance to the antennas input impedance which shows a high inductive component for the traditional case of using a direct contact feed. It is then found that, with the coupling feed, the high input inductance of the antenna is effectively compensated and additional resonances (zero reactance) can be obtained in the input impedance over the lower and upper bands of the antenna. This behavior leads to a dual-resonance excitation for the lower band at about 1 GHz and an improved impedance matching for the upper band at about 1.9 GHz. In this study, two wide operating bands of about 500 MHz in bandwidth are achieved, allowing the antennas lower and upper bands to easily cover GSM850/900 and GSM1800/1900/UMTS operations, respectively. Design considerations of the proposed antenna are described in the paper, and results for the fabricated prototype are presented and discussed. Effects of the major parameters of the antennas coupling feed are also analyzed.

Index TermsCoupling feed, internal laptop antennas, multiband operation, shorted monopole antennas, WWAN antennas.

II. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS OF PROPOSED ANTENNA Fig. 1(a) shows the proposed antenna for GSM850/900/1800/1900/ UMTS operation in the laptop computer, and the dimensions of the antennas feeding portion are given in Fig. 1(b). The antenna is to be mounted at the top edge of the ground plane of size 260 2 200 mm2 , which in this study is a 0.2-mm thick brass plate and is treated as the supporting metal frame for the display of the laptop computer. The ground plane is required to be included in the study for the proposed antenna embedded inside the laptop computer, and the groundplane dimensions in this study are reasonable for general laptop computers. The antenna has a height of 9 mm only, which allows it promising to be embedded inside the narrow spacing between the top edge of the ground plane and the casing of the laptop computer. The antenna comprises a at narrow radiating strip and a feeding portion. The radiating strip has a length of 79 mm and a width of 5 mm, and is also cut from a 0.2-mm thick brass plate. Note that the radiating strip is selected to have a wide width of 5 mm, which is helpful in obtaining wide bandwidths for the excited lower and upper bands [16]. The feeding portion, different from the traditional case of using a direct contact feed (see the reference antenna in the inset in Fig. 3), mainly comprises a coupling feed and a shorting strip, both printed on a 0.8-mm thick FR4 substrate of relative permittivity 4.4

I. INTRODUCTION It has recently been desired that the internal WWAN antenna be embedded in the laptop computer for covering GSM850/900/1800/ 1900/UMTS (824  894=890  960=1710  1880=1850  1990=1920  2170 MHz) operation. In this case, by incorporating the internal WWAN antenna and the traditional 2.4/5 GHz internal WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) antenna in the laptop computer, seamless wireless internet access can be achieved. For the 2.4/5 GHz internal WLAN antennas, many promising designs for laptop computer applications have been available in the published papers [1][9]. For the internal WWAN antennas for laptop computer
Manuscript received March 10, 2008; revised June 10, 2008. Current version published November 14, 2008. The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung 804, Taiwan (e-mail: changch@ema.ee.nsysu. edu.tw). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2008.2005550

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