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In this communication, the design procedure of a wideband antenna with omnidirectional radiation pattern is demonstrated based on the theory of characteristic modes. Consisting of a dipole and a loop antenna, the antenna has a very simple structure. A wide impedance bandwidth is obtained because of the simultaneous excitation of the antenna’s first two modes. Meanwhile, due to the fact that these two modes share a similar omnidirectional radiation pattern, a stable radiation pattern is also achieved across the operating frequency band. In order to identify the antenna’s different modes, a characteristic mode analysis of the antenna is carried out first. Then, a feed configuration is specifically designed to excite the desired modes. To validate the antenna design, a prototype was fabricated and tested. Measured results agree well with the simulated ones. Measurement shows that a wide impedance bandwidth of 44.2% with \vert \textS11\vert < -10 dB (1.85–2.9 GHz) and stable radiation patterns at both E-plane and H-plane were achieved over the operating frequency band. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, a novel six-mode loop antenna covering 660–1100, 1710–3020, 3370–3900, and 5150–5850 MHz has been proposed for the application of long-term evolution (LTE) including the coming LTE in unlicensed spectrum and LTE-Licensed Assisted Access. Loop antennas offer better user experience than conventional planar inverted-F antennas (PIFAs), inverted-F antennas (IFAs), and monopole antennas because of their unique balanced modes ( $1\lambda $ , $2\lambda , \ldots $ ). However, the bandwidth of loop antennas is usually narrower than that of PIFA/IFA and monopole antennas due to these balanced modes. To overcome this problem, a novel monopole/dipole parasitic element, which operates at an unbalanced monopole-like $0.25\lambda $ mode and a balanced dipole-like $0.5\lambda $ mode, is first proposed for loop antennas to cover more frequency bands. Benefiting from the balanced mode, the proposed parasitic element is promising to provide better user experience than conventional parasitic elements. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the balanced mode for a parasitic element is reported for the first time. The proposed antenna is able to provide excellent user experience while solving the problem of limited bandwidth in loop antennas. To validate the concept, one prototype antenna with a size of $75 \times 10\times 5$ mm3 is designed, fabricated, and measured. Both simulations and experimental results are presented and discussed. Good performance is achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]