Patent Description:
The ultra wide band (UWB) technology is a wireless carrier communication technology. It does not use sinusoidal carriers, but uses nanosecond non-sinusoidal narrow pulses to transmit data, such that it occupies a wide spectrum. The UWB technology has the characteristics of wide frequency band, high transmission rate, low power, high security and low system complexity, which plays an important role in wireless communication devices.

Antennas are the main components of ultra-wideband systems. Aperture antennas are favored by users because of their advantages of simple design, little influence by the environment and themselves, as well as wide frequency band, etc. Horn antenna is a type of aperture antenna. <FIG> is a schematic diagram of the structure of a horn antenna <NUM> in related technologies. As shown in <FIG>, the horn antenna <NUM> includes a radiator in which a waveguide section <NUM> is connected with a horn section <NUM>, and a feeding mechanism composed of a feeding probe <NUM> located in the waveguide section <NUM> and a metal ball <NUM> disposed at the end of the feeding probe <NUM>. The feeding mechanism is located at the bottom of the waveguide section <NUM>. The horn antenna can overcome the problems of narrow bandwidth and being susceptible to environmental influences. However, with the development of wireless communication equipment, such as smart TV, mobile phone, the requirements for miniaturization of UWB antenna are increasingly higher.

However, how to apply the aperture antenna to an integrated communication terminal as a whole machine, has become a technical problem to be solved.

Related arts can be found in <CIT>, <CIT>, <CIT>, <CIT> and <CIT>.

In order to overcome the problems existing in related technologies, the present disclosure provides a wireless communication terminal according to claim <NUM>.

The technical solutions provided by the examples of the present invention may have the following beneficial effects.

The ultra wide band (UWB) antenna according to the present disclosure overcomes the technical problems that the horn antenna in the related technologies is difficult to be applied to an integrated communication terminal due to its large size, complicated structure, and difficulties in processing.

In the ultra wide band (UWB) antenna according to the present disclosure, feeding is implemented through the open-end face, which can effectively increase the bandwidth. It also eliminates the interference of other metal components on the whole machine to the antenna, and thus the performance of the antenna is not affected.

It is to be understood that, the above general description and detailed description below are only exemplary and explanatory and do not limit the present invention.

The implementations set forth in the following description of exemplary embodiments do not represent all implementations consistent with the invention. Instead, they are merely examples of apparatuses and methods consistent with aspects related to the invention as recited in the appended claims.

In related technologies, the main types of ultra wide band (UWB) antennas include: helical antennas, cone spiral antennas, log periodic antennas, pyramid antennas, spherical antennas, reflector antennas, horn antennas, fishbone antennas, etc..

UWB antennas can be roughly divided into the following four categories according to their working principles: line element antennas, traveling wave antennas, array antennas, and aperture antennas. Among them, the line element antennas, the traveling wave antennas (such as planar helical antennas) and the array antennas may have the shortcomings of complex design, high processing accuracy requirements, difficult debugging and maintenance, being susceptible to environmental influences, interference between antennas and narrow bandwidth, so they are not suitable for application in the integrated devices of the whole machine, such as a smart TV, a mobile phone, etc. Compared with those antennas, aperture antennas have the advantages of simple design, not being susceptible to environmental influences, having little interference between antennas, and wide frequency band, etc., and thus have become the choice of users to apply to the integrated devices of the whole machine.

As described above, <FIG> is a schematic diagram of the structure of a horn antenna <NUM> in related technologies. As shown in <FIG>, the horn antenna <NUM>, as one type of aperture antenna, has overcome the problems of being susceptible to environmental influences and having a narrow bandwidth. However, the following difficulties still exist in the application of the horn antenna <NUM> to the integrated devices, such as wireless communication terminals.

For example, it may be difficult to process the horn section <NUM> of the horn antenna <NUM>. Also for example, since the feeding mechanism has a structure composed of the feeding probe <NUM> and the metal ball <NUM>, and is located at the bottom of the waveguide section <NUM>, it may be inconvenient to debug and maintain the feeding mechanism. As another example, during batch processing, if the position of the flange connected to the feeding mechanism is slightly shifted, the tightening of the screws on the flange being slightly larger or smaller may affect the processing accuracy of the horn antenna <NUM>, thus affecting the performance of the antenna, and the processing consistency of the horn antenna is degraded. In addition, the height (length) of the feeding probe <NUM> shall be at least a quarter wavelength of the operating frequency. For example, when the low frequency band is in a range of <NUM> to <NUM>, the height of the waveguide section should be at least <NUM>, and the distance between the feeding probe <NUM> and the rear-end face of the waveguide section <NUM> should be at least <NUM>. Therefore, both the height and the length of the horn antenna <NUM> are relatively large, making it difficult to apply to an integrated communication terminal with a limited size, such as a smart TV or a smart phone.

In view of this, the present disclosure provides a UWB antenna, which overcomes the technical problem that it is difficult to apply the horn antenna in the related technologies to an integrated communication terminal due to its large size, complicated structure, and difficulties in processing.

<FIG> is a schematic diagram illustrating an overall structure of a UWB antenna <NUM>, according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. <FIG> is a front view of the structure of the UWB antenna <NUM>. <FIG> is a top view of the structure of the UWB antenna <NUM>.

As shown in <FIG>, the UWB antenna <NUM> may include a radiator <NUM> and a feeding end <NUM>.

The radiator <NUM> is a rectangular parallelepiped structure. The radiator <NUM> is a metal radiator. The radiator <NUM> includes a first pair of side faces (left and right) <NUM> and <NUM>' opposite to each other, a second pair of side faces (upper and lower) <NUM> and <NUM>' opposite to each other, and a pair of end faces (front and rear) <NUM> and <NUM>' opposite to each other.

The radiator <NUM> includes a waveguide cavity <NUM>; the waveguide cavity <NUM> has open-end faces <NUM> and <NUM>' opposite to each other. The open-end faces <NUM> and <NUM>' of the waveguide cavity <NUM> are coplanar with the pair of end faces (front and rear) <NUM> and <NUM>' of the radiator <NUM>, respectively. Thus, a penetrated-through waveguide cavity <NUM> is formed inside the radiator <NUM>.

The waveguide cavity <NUM> has a rectangular parallelepiped shape and a rectangular cross-section. The waveguide cavity <NUM> includes a first pair of inner side walls (upper and lower) <NUM> and <NUM>' opposite to each other, and a second pair of inner side walls (left and right) <NUM> and <NUM>' opposite to each other. The first pair of inner side walls (upper and lower) <NUM> and <NUM>' and the second pair of inner side walls (left and right) <NUM> and <NUM>' together form the waveguide cavity <NUM>.

The feeding end <NUM> is disposed on one of the open-end faces <NUM> and <NUM>' of the waveguide cavity <NUM> to receive wireless communication signals. For example, the feeding end <NUM> is disposed on the end faces of the first pair of inner side walls <NUM> and <NUM>'. The feeding end <NUM> shown in <FIG> is disposed on the end faces of the first pair of side walls <NUM> and <NUM>' at the rear end of the waveguide cavity <NUM>.

For example, the first pair of inner side walls <NUM> and <NUM>' includes a first upper side wall and a first lower side wall; the feeding end <NUM> is disposed on an open-end face on which the first lower side wall is located. The antenna <NUM> further includes a grounding end which is disposed on an open-end face on which the first upper side wall is located.

For example, the feeding end <NUM> may be electrically connected to a radio frequency transceiver of a wireless communication terminal through a connector (not shown). The connector may be a coaxial cable. A central conductor of the coaxial cable is welded to the end face of one <NUM>' of the second pair of side walls of the waveguide cavity <NUM>, and an outer conductor (woven mesh) of the coaxial cable is welded to the end faces of one <NUM> of the second pair of side walls of the waveguide cavity <NUM>.

For example, the feeding end <NUM> deviates from a central axis of the open-end face of the waveguide cavity <NUM>. Since the energy loss of the signals at the central axis of the open-end face of the waveguide cavity (i.e., the central feeding) may be very large, in this example, by means of the biased feeding, the energy loss of the signals can be effectively reduced, and the bandwidth can be further increased.

Compared with the horn antenna, in the UWB antenna according to the present disclosure, the horn mouth is removed, and thus the difficulty in processing is reduced. Compared with the horn antenna in the related technologies that uses an open-end feeding method, the waveguide cavity according to the present disclosure has opposite open-end faces, i.e., it is a penetrated-through waveguide cavity by feeding through the end faces, the resonance frequency of the antenna can be reduced, and thus the effective bandwidth can be increased. In addition, by means of feeding through the end faces, the height of the waveguide cavity can be greatly reduced (which may be <NUM>/<NUM> of the height of the waveguide section of the horn antenna), such that the overall size of the antenna is small and compact, and therefore the antenna can be applied to various wireless communication terminals.

The present disclosure further provides a wireless communication terminal. The wireless communication terminal may be a mobile phone, a notebook computer, a tablet computer, a smart TV, or any electronic device that can be equipped with an antenna transceiver apparatus.

<FIG> is a schematic diagram of a wireless communication terminal <NUM>, according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. For illustrative purpose only, the wireless communication terminal <NUM> is shown as a smart TV, but the present disclosure is not limited thereto.

The wireless communication terminal <NUM> includes a radio frequency transceiver (not shown) and the UWB antenna described above. The feeding end <NUM> of the UWB antenna is electrically connected to the radio frequency transceiver.

For instance, the feeding end <NUM> may be electrically connected to the radio frequency transceiver through a connector. The connector may be a coaxial cable. In this example, an Internet Packet eXchange (IPX) coaxial cable with an insulation sheath outer diameter of <NUM> is used to feed the antenna. The IPX coaxial cable can effectively suppress the high-order mode in the coaxial line. In the implementation, a central conductor of the coaxial cable is welded to the feeding end of the waveguide cavity, i.e., the lower side wall of the waveguide cavity; and an outer conductor (woven mesh) of the coaxial cable is welded to the upper side wall of the waveguide cavity. In addition to the welding connection, other suitable connection manners, such as crimping, can also be used, as long as the electrical conductivity of the connecting joint is ensured. In order to ensure the connection between the antenna and the radio frequency on the motherboard, the IPX coaxial cable should be of an appropriate length, for example, <NUM> to <NUM>.

In this example, compared with the horn antenna in the related technologies, the UWB antenna <NUM> (<FIG>) can greatly reduce the height of the waveguide cavity <NUM> of the radiator <NUM> by means of feeding through the end faces, on the basis of retaining the advantages of the effective bandwidth of the horn antenna and being less affected by environmental factors. As such, the overall size of the radiator <NUM> can be made smaller to meet the practical application on the wireless communication terminal <NUM>. Thus, it overcomes the technical difficulty in applying the aperture antenna to the communication terminal device, such that the aperture antenna can be applied to the communication terminal. In addition, the UWB antenna in this embodiment eliminates the interference of the metal on the whole machine to the antenna.

For example, the wireless communication terminal <NUM> includes a metal component, and the waveguide cavity <NUM> of the antenna <NUM> is formed in the metal component. The metal component may be a metal frame <NUM> of the smart TV, or a metal panel of a display screen <NUM>. In this embodiment, the metal frame <NUM> is taken as an example of the metal component for description.

For example, the wireless communication terminal <NUM> may have a size of <NUM>×<NUM>×<NUM>, including a main body and the display screen <NUM>. The main body includes a rear shell (not shown) with a cavity and the metal frame <NUM>. The metal frame <NUM> is electrically connected to the grounding end of the display screen <NUM> for grounding. For example, the length of the metal frame <NUM> in the front-rear direction may be between <NUM> and <NUM>. The thickness of the metal frame <NUM> can be <NUM> or more. The metal frame <NUM> may be manufactured by aluminum conductive oxidation, brass zinc plating or other suitable materials and processes.

For example, as shown in <FIG>, the metal frame <NUM> of the smart TV can be used as a base. The metal frame <NUM> with a thickness of <NUM> is provided with a groove with a width of <NUM> and a height of <NUM>, where the groove penetrates, so that the waveguide cavity <NUM> can be formed as a radiator. For example, the thickness of the lower side wall of the cavity <NUM> may be between <NUM> and <NUM>, and the thickness of each side wall of the cavity <NUM> is not limited by the size. The thickness of the metal frame may vary with the size of the smart TV, and the thickness of each side wall of the cavity <NUM> changes with the thickness of the metal frame, as long as it meets the cross-sectional size of the cavity <NUM> of <NUM>×<NUM>.

A feeding end is provided at the position deviated from the central axis of the open-end faces of the cavity <NUM>. The feeding end is used to connect the positive end of the signal of the coaxial transmission line to couple with the radio frequency transceiver, and transmit and receive antenna signals. A grounding end is disposed at the open-end faces of the cavity <NUM> approximately parallel to the feeding end. The grounding end is used to connect the negative end of the coaxial transmission line, to be coupled with a negative signal end of a wireless signal generator and a system ground.

For example, other metal components of the smart TV, such as a metal shell, can be used as a base. The metal shell is provided with a groove with a width of <NUM> and a height of <NUM>, where the groove penetrates, so that the waveguide cavity <NUM> can be formed as a radiator.

For example, the terminal <NUM> includes a plurality of antennas <NUM>. For example, the plurality of antennas may be independent antennas, or the metal component on the terminal <NUM> may be used as a base. A plurality of waveguide cavities <NUM> are provided in the metal component. There is no need to consider the mutual effects between the plurality of cavities <NUM>. The distances between the plurality of cavities <NUM> can be set as required. Each antenna on the metal component may be the same or different. In this example, the electronic device is provided with three groups of the same antennas, one of which is the main antenna, and the other two are the auxiliary antennas.

<FIG> is a graph illustrating a return loss curve of a single antenna structure, according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. As shown in <FIG>, generally, for a broadband antenna with a frequency of <NUM> to <NUM>, the return loss S11 only requires -<NUM> dB. The antenna in this embodiment has a return loss of <NUM> dB, which fully meets the requirements of the broadband antenna.

<FIG> is a graph illustrating return loss curves of a plurality of antenna structures, according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. <FIG> is a graph illustrating curves of isolation degree of a plurality of antenna structures, according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. As shown in <FIG> and <FIG>, the isolation degrees between a plurality of antenna structures (three shown in the figures) are not less than <NUM> dB, which meets the design requirements. Under the premise that the three antenna structures meet the mutual isolation degree, the respective return losses S11, S22 and S33 also meet the design requirements.

<FIG> is a schematic diagram illustrating simulation results of radiation efficiency of an antenna, such as the antenna <NUM> (<FIG>), according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. As shown in <FIG>, the radiation efficiency of the antenna structure is slightly greater than <NUM> (<NUM>%), indicating that the radiation efficiency of the antenna structure of this embodiment is high.

Other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the invention disclosed here. This application is intended to cover any variations, uses, or adaptations of the invention following the general principles thereof and including such departures from the present disclosure as come within known or customary practice in the art. It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with a true scope of the invention being indicated by the following claims.

Claim 1:
A wireless communication terminal, comprising:
a radio frequency transceiver; and
a plurality of UWB antennas,
wherein each UWB antenna comprises:
a radiator (<NUM>) comprising a waveguide cavity (<NUM>) having opposite open-end faces (<NUM>, <NUM>'); wherein the open-end faces (<NUM>, <NUM>') of the waveguide cavity (<NUM>) are coplanar with a pair of end faces of the radiator (<NUM>) respectively; and
a feeding end (<NUM>) disposed on one of the open-end faces (<NUM>, <NUM>') and configured to receive a wireless communication signal,
wherein the feeding end (<NUM>) of each antenna is electrically connected to the radio frequency transceiver.