1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dipole antenna, which is characterized in a type of high gain antenna structure for wireless modules or local area network systems.
2. Description of Related Art
At present, most of the antennas found inside the wireless module equipped into various electronic products simply have the single frequency-band operation capability. Therefore, it can be expected that, as the market gradually expands, the configured antennas having simply the wireless module with single-frequency operation capabilities are becoming insufficient in terms of their short-distance operating stability and future market competitiveness. As such, obviously, the development of high-gain antennas will be the mainstream trend of related electronic products in the future. It is known that the conventional technologies have been applied onto currently available operating devices, but, upon adjusting and operating the antenna to obtain the highest gain, the mutual matching relationship among the components of the antenna must be taken into consideration and can be quite complicated in practice.
In addition, since the current electronic products are developing towards features like low-cost, lightweight, thin, short, and small designs, it can be anticipated that the wireless modules equipped into various electronic products will accordingly be characterized in their low-cost, lightweight, slim shape as well. Under such circumstance, the volume of the antenna installed inside the wireless module will also be limited to a certain volume.
The conventional low-power short-distance Bluetooth applications generally have a transmission distance of about 20-30 meters, and the best low-cost design may reach about 50 meters; whereas, certain high-cost System In Package (SIP) integrating the internal RF chip antenna can also effectively achieve the performance of approximately 100 meters. Hence, to design the microstrip antenna having extremely high gain, long communication distance, low manufacture cost and miniaturization has been the goal of the industry's efforts.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a dipole antenna, wherein two antenna groups have a length of a quarter wavelength on the substrate and individually form two feeding points by means of the intersections of the respective vertical radiating metallic lines and the radiating metallic lines on both sides, and a feeding microstrip line is connected between such two feeding points or two vertical radiating metallic lines for conjunctively transmitting enhanced signals. With the design illustrated in the present invention, it is possible to increase high gain to perform stable single-frequency and long-distance operations, and offer appropriate capabilities for wireless module/local area network systems as well as desirable characteristics of low cost, lightness, thinness, and small size. These satisfy the current requirements on the volume reduction of the electronic product, so the present invention should be an optimal solution.
The present invention provides a dipole antenna which is formed on a substrate having a ground plane and comprises: a first antenna group, including a first radiating metallic line and a first vertical radiating metallic line, in which the intersection of the first radiating metallic line and the first vertical radiating metallic line is a first feeding point, and the end of the first vertical radiating metallic line remote from the first feeding point is connected to a signal source, while the end of the first radiating metallic line remote from the first feeding point is maintained at a distance from the ground plane; a second antenna group, including a second radiating metallic line and a second vertical radiating metallic line, in which the intersection of the second radiating metallic line and the second vertical radiating metallic line is a second feeding point, and the other ends of the second radiating metallic line and the second vertical radiating metallic line remote from the second feeding point are connected to the ground plane; and a feeding microstrip line, in which one end of the feeding microstrip line is connected to the first vertical radiating metallic line, which the other end thereof is connected to the second vertical radiating metallic line.
In a preferred embodiment, the first antenna group and the second antenna group have a nearly symmetrical feature on the front, rear, left and right sides and have a better vertical radiation performance.
In a preferred embodiment, the first antenna group and the second antenna group have a length of a quarter wavelength on the substrate and form a symmetrical pattern.
In a preferred embodiment, a part of the wire segment of the first radiating metallic line is in perpendicular or/and parallel correspondence with the first vertical radiating metallic line, and a part of the wire segment of the second radiating metallic line is in perpendicular or/and parallel correspondence with the second vertically radiating metallic line.
In a preferred embodiment, the first vertical radiating metallic line, the second vertical radiating metallic line or the feeding microstrip line are straight lines, and the first vertical radiating metallic line and the second vertical radiating metallic line are in a parallel configuration.
In a preferred embodiment, the first resonance path starting from the first radiating metallic line to the first vertical radiating metallic line is used to define the first operating frequency of the dipole antenna, and the second resonance path starting from the second radiating metallic line to the second vertical radiating metallic line is used to define the second operating frequency of the dipole antenna.
In a preferred embodiment, the first antenna group is at the first operating frequency 2.3-2.45 GHz and the wire length is 31-35 mm, and the second antenna group is at the second operating frequency 2.35-2.5 GHz and the wire length is 28-33 mm, such that the wire length is adjusted based on the frequency changes thereby achieving the optimal antenna gain.
In a preferred embodiment, the substrate includes a first surface and a second surface, the first antenna group and the second antenna group are arranged on the first surface, and the second surface has a circuit configuration area and the ground plane.
In a preferred embodiment, the first radiating metallic line and the second radiating metallic line are configured on the substrate in a planar or spiral shape.
In a preferred embodiment, the two ends of the feeding microstrip line are respectively connected to the first feeding point and the second feeding point.
Other technical contents, aspects and effects in relation to the present invention can be clearly appreciated through the detailed descriptions concerning the preferred embodiments of the present invention in conjunction with the appended drawings.
Please refer to
The substrate 1 includes a first surface 101 and a second surface 102, in which the dipole antenna is printed on the surface 101, while the second surface 102 is configured as an electrical circuit allocation area to provide circuit component layout and wiring; the second surface 102 is also printed with a ground plane 1021 for the grounding purpose of a wireless module. In this embodiment, the first surface 101 and the second surface 102 are located on the same plane, but it is not used to limit the scope of the present patent application. That is, the first surface 101 and the second surface 102 can also be configured on different planes; for example, the second surface 102 is arranged on the front surface of the substrate 1 and the first surface 101 is arranged on the rear side of the substrate 1.
Because of the planarization characteristics with respect to the design structure of the substrate 1 in the present invention, and the high integration between the dipole antenna and the system circuit of the substrate 1, it can be appreciated that the present invention provides not only the features of lightness, thinness, and small size, but also meets the requirements on the electronic product volume reduction.
The illustrated dipole antenna comprises:
a first antenna group 11, including at least a first radiating metallic line 111 and a first vertical radiating metallic line 112, in which one end 1121 of the first vertical metallic line 112 is connected to a signal source 1022 (i.e. the RF signals) for receiving the transmission signals, while the other end is connected to the first radiating metallic line 111, and the intersection part is referred as a first feeding point 113 which is applied to transmit signals; meanwhile, the end 1111 of the first radiating metallic line 111 remote from the first feeding point 113 is not connected to the ground plane 1021 and is kept at a distance from the ground plane 1021, and such a separation distance is used to adjust the matching with the ground so that the first antenna group 11 can operate as a radio frequency radiation part;
a second antenna group 12, located on one side of the first antenna group 11 and including at least a second radiating metallic line 121 and a second vertical radiating metallic line 122, in which the ends 1211, 1221 of the second radiating metallic line 121 and the second vertical radiating metallic line 122 are connected to the ground plane 1021, while the other ends of the second radiating metallic line 121 and the second vertical radiating metallic line 122 are mutually connected, the intersection is referred as a second feeding point 123 which is applied to transmit signals so that the second antenna group can form a ground part; besides, a wire segment 124 is configured near the ground plane 1021 for compensation matching; and
a feeding microstrip line 13, connected between the first feeding point 113 and the second feeding point 123; in the present embodiment, the feeding microstrip line 13 has a characteristic impedance of 50 ohms and connects the radio frequency end and the ground end to achieve the purpose of signal transmission enhancement.
The first radiating metallic line 111 has the following characteristics:
Moreover, the second radiating metallic line 121 has the following characteristics:
In addition, the first radiating metallic line 111 and the second radiating metallic line 121 present a left-right symmetrical pattern on both sides of the first vertical radiating metallic line 112 and the second vertical radiating metallic line 122.
Also, the wire widths of the first radiating metallic line 111, the first vertical radiating metallic line 112, the second radiating metallic line 121 or the second vertical radiating metallic line 122 can be the same or different; for example, in case the frequency is 2.3-2.5 GHz, the best wire width is 0.25-0.35 mm, including 0.25 mm, 0.3 mm and 0.35 mm.
Besides, the first resonance path starting from the first radiating metallic line 111 to the first vertical radiating metallic line 112 is used to define the first operating frequency of the dipole antenna, and the second resonance path starting from the second radiating metallic line 121 to the second vertical radiating metallic line 122 is used to define the second operating frequency of the dipole antenna, in which the second operating frequency is higher than the first operating frequency.
Besides, compared with the prior art, upon determining to perform the single-frequency operation, the relationship among such applied components needs to be considered, and the dipole antenna according to the present invention is achieved by individually adjusting the wire lengths of the first radiating metallic line 111 and the second radiating metal 121 thereby conveniently adjusting the frequencies (i.e., the first operating frequency and the second operating frequency) of the two resonance modes in the dipole antenna in order to reach the frequency band required by the wireless module/local area network system.
With respect to the antenna structure, in addition to the configuration disclosed in
As further shown in
Next, referring to
It can be appreciated that, if one of the antenna groups in the present invention is connected to the RF signal source, then the other antenna group can be connected to the ground plane 1021; therefore, in the present invention, the location of the first antenna group 11 or the second antenna group 12 is not restricted to be on the left or right side of the substrate 1.
In practice, the present invention adopts a microwave substrate 1 having a relative dielectric constant of 4.4 and a thickness of 1.0 mm, and a single-frequency dipole antenna with an area of 7×11.6 mm2, wherein the first radiating metallic line 111 has a length of 25 mm and a width of 0.3 mm, while the length of the second radiating metallic line 121 is 25 mm and the width is 0.3 mm; additionally, the length of the first and second vertical radiating metallic lines 112, 122 is 6.8 mm and the width thereof is 0.3 mm. The following experimental results can be obtained.
In the present invention, the aforementioned antenna structures are respectively measured, and the measurement results are recorded, as below:
Moreover, as shown in
The antenna gains and RF signal ranges are summarized as below, and it can appreciated from Tables 1 and 2 that, within the frequency bands 2.3 GHz, 2.4 GHz or 2.5 GHz, the dipole antenna according to the present invention can demonstrate pretty good gain performance based on actually measured distance results for conversions, as shown in the following Tables:
Furthermore, since the configuration among the first radiating metallic line 111, the second radiating metallic line 121, the first vertical radiating metallic line 112 and the second vertical radiating metallic line 122 can be flexible, the system circuitry integration of the dipole antenna and the substrate 1 can be accordingly improved. In addition, the proportion of the area of the substrate 1 occupied by the dipole antenna can be effectively reduced, so that it can clearly meet the requirements concerning electronic product volume reduction.
In comparison with other conventional technologies, the dipole antenna according to the present invention provides the following advantages:
It should be noticed that, although the present invention has been disclosed through the detailed descriptions of the aforementioned embodiments, such illustrations are by no means used to restrict the scope of the present invention; that is, skilled ones in relevant fields of the present invention can certainly devise any applicable alterations and modifications after having comprehended the aforementioned technical characteristics and embodiments of the present invention within the spirit and scope thereof. Hence, the scope of the present invention to be protected under patent laws should be delineated in accordance with the claims set forth hereunder in the present specification.