Cost/performance optimized IEEE802.11A/B/G front end with integrated antenna diversity

This paper deals with an optimized architecture of an antenna and its RF Front End compliant with the IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards. It is based on the use of two printed end-fire antennas (Minard et al., 2005), where each antenna has separated accesses at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz (Minard et al., 2005). These two accesses are sufficiently decorrelated and well matched on their respective bands. The use of separated access at the 2 bands connected to a single broadband antenna allows the suppression of components such as diplexers and relaxes the constraints on others components such as DPDT (double port double through). Thus a lower cost and better performances RF Front End is achieved. This antenna-RF Front End could be used in a 2*2 MIMO system, compatible with the Cardbus format.