A Compact and Wideband Dashboard Antenna for Vehicular LTE/5G Wireless Communications

Abstract

A wideband, low-profile, 3D automotive antenna for Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and 5G applications is presented in this paper. Different from other cellular antennas typically placed under the shark-fin cover or inside a car’s plastic spoiler, the proposed antenna is designed to be integrated inside the vehicle’s dashboard. The 35.5 × 40 × 45 mm3 antenna is compact, lightweight and robust. At the same time, this antenna is capable of operating from 670 up to 5000 MHz, covering the entire LTE/5G band (overall fractional bandwidth of 198%). A shunt stub was introduced between the monopole and ground plane to achieve a low LTE band and provide mechanical robustness for the proposed structure. Simulated performance in terms of reflection coefficient, radiation pattern and realized gain is described, showing a good agreement with the measurement results. Specifically, the antenna has a gain higher than −1 dBi at the low-frequency band (i.e., below 1 GHz) and higher than 3 dBi at the upper-frequency band (i.e., above 1.7 GHz). As per requirements, the ground plane size and layout can be properly chosen to fit the antenna into the available volume as well as to optimize the antenna’s performance.