Apple Inc.

Bhaskara R Rupakula

Harish Rajagopalan

Hao Xu

Jennifer M Edwards

Bilgehan Avser

Mattia Pascolini

Siwen Yong

Enrique Ayala Vazquez

Hongfei Hu

Carlo Di Nallo

Simone Paulotto

Erdinc Irci

Salih Yarga

Michael D Quinones

Ming Chen

Yuancheng Xu

Tiejun Yu

Haozhan Tian

Laura M Burke

Gareth L Rose

Thomas W Yang

Jiechen Wu

Seyed Mohammad Amjadi

Ahmed Ali Abdelhaliem Nafe

Woonyong Bae

Joel Ravi

An electronic device may be provided with sidewalls and a conductive plate. A segment of the sidewalls may form a radiating arm of an antenna. A display may be mounted to the sidewalls. The display may include a conductive frame and a flexible printed circuit. The flexible circuit may have a bend. Conductive foam may short a conductive trace on the flexible circuit to the conductive frame near the bend. Low injection pressure overmolding (LIPO) may be molded over the flexible circuit, the foam, and the frame. A conductive spring may short the frame to the conductive plate. The spring may include a wider and/or thinner portion that optionally includes one or more notches for reducing its inductance. The conductive plate, the spring, the frame, the foam, and the conductive trace may form part of the antenna ground for the antenna.

Electronic device antennas with narrow border display

An electronic device may be provided with a conductive sidewall. An aperture may be formed in the sidewall. The sidewall may have a cavity that extends from the aperture towards the interior of the device. The cavity may be filled with an injection-molded plastic substrate. A dielectric block having a dielectric constant greater than that of the injection-molded plastic substrate and the antenna layers may be embedded in the injection-molded plastic substrate. The dielectric block may at least partially overlap an antenna. The antenna may convey radio-frequency signals at a frequency greater than 10 GHz through the cavity, the dielectric block, the injection-molded plastic substrate, and the aperture. The dielectric block may increase the effective dielectric constant of the cavity, allowing the antenna to cover relatively low frequencies without increasing the size of the aperture.

Electronic devices having antennas with loaded dielectric apertures

A radio frequency system package may include waveguides and loading blocks. The loading blocks may include dielectric material having a high dielectric constant between 13 and 20. Additionally, the loading blocks may be made of mold, epoxy, or the like material, and the loading blocks may fit into a region cut out of the waveguides. Moreover, the loading blocks may lower the cut-off frequency for wireless communication otherwise provided by the waveguides without the loading blocks (e.g., 28 GHz). In particular, the loading blocks may facilitate communication in low mmWave frequencies, such as 24 GHz.

Loading blocks for antennas in system packaging

An electronic device may be provided with a sidewall and an antenna module pressed against an interior surface of the sidewall. The module may include a phased antenna array. The sidewall may have apertures aligned with respective antenna in the array. The antennas may convey radio-frequency signals in first and second frequency bands greater than 10 GHz and with vertical and horizontal polarizations. Each aperture may include a corresponding cavity with non-linear cavity walls. The antennas may excite resonant cavity modes of the cavities that cause the cavities to radiate the radio-frequency signals as waveguide radiators. At the same time, the apertures may form a smooth impedance transition between the antennas and free space for the radio-frequency signals of both the horizontal and vertical polarizations.

Electronic devices having side-mounted antenna modules

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Bhaskara R Rupakula