Antenna-on-Display Concept on an Extremely Thin Substrate for Sub-6 GHz Wireless Applications

This communication presents a concept of a sub-6 GHz antenna-on-display (AoD) that can eventually be integrated into the transparent area of a display panel of various wireless devices for the first time in the literature. The transparency of the proposed microwave AoD is realized using metal mesh conductive film and features optical transparency, which is compatible with high-resolution liquid crystal display (LCD)/organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panel requirements. To maximize the radiation efficiency despite the extremely thin substrate (0.0048 lambda(0)), a traveling-wave antenna topology is inspired and further modified to incorporate the inherent structural limitations of modern-day high-resolution display panels. Eventually designed to operate in a leaky-wave mode, a novella dedicated feeding mechanism is introduced to minimize undesired coupling between the antenna structure and the display panel. The composite right-/left-handed (CRLH) unit cell employs a single shunt inductor topology to maximize the radiation efficiency. The measured 6 dB impedance bandwidth of the proposed microwave AoD is from 2.36 to 6.17 GHz, which is consistent with the fast wave region of the proposed unit cell. The measured realized gain of the microwave AoD consisting of 13 unit cells is 2.68 dBi at 5.5 GHz with a radiation efficiency of 62.5%. This is the first demonstration to ascertain that an AoD topology can be applicable at microwave applications while reducing the antenna-to-ground distance by approximately a factor of 20 compared to previous studies.