Apple Inc.

Matthew A Mow

Mattia Pascolini

Ming-Ju Tsai

Liang Han

Yuehui Ouyang

Ruben Caballero

Robert W Schlub

Basim H Noori

Enrique Ayala Vazquez

Hongfei Hu

Nanbo Jin

Thomas E Biedka

Simone Paulotto

Yijun Zhou

Victor C Lee

Hao Xu

Yi Jiang

Xu Han

James G Judkins

Erdinc Irci

Harish Rajagopalan

Jayesh Nath

Rodney Andres Gomez Angulo

Jennifer M Edwards

Erica J Tong

Bilgehan Avser

Salih Yarga

Joshua G Nickel

Dean F Darnell

Anand Lakshmanan

Khan M Salam

Peter I Bevelacqua

Qingxiang Li

Yuancheng Xu

Siwen Yong

David W Pratt

Yiren Wang

Boon Wai Shiu

Han Wang

Iyappan Ramachandran

Yakun Sun

Rohit U Nabar

Jing Zhu

Robert J Hill

Mingguang Xu

Carlo Di Nallo

Benjamin Shane Bustle

Mario Martinis

Andrea Ruaro

Eduardo Jorge Da Costa Bras Lima

Mithat C Dogan

Ehsan Haghani

Georgios Atmatzakis

Robert S Sorensen

Rocco V Dragone, Jr

Travis A Barbieri

Kevin M Marks

Jinku Kim

Mohit Narang

Victor W Lee

Jr-Yi Shen

Miroslav Samardzija

Umar Azad

Vishwanath Venkataraman

Ming Yuan Tsai

Hagan O'Connor

Nirali Shah

Nicholas S Reimnitz

Xin Cui

Peter Bevelacqua

Enrique Ayala Vasquez

Mattia Pascolinl

A radio frequency device has a multifunctional tuner that stores measurements of reflection coefficient parameter in a register. The radio frequency device also has a transceiver that has a transmitter. The transceiver may detect a transmitter signal from the transmitter to an antenna in an initial tuning state and then determine whether the transmitter signal is stable. In response to the transmitter signal being stable, the transceiver may measuring the reflection coefficient parameters at the multifunctional tuner. Furthermore, the radio frequency device has a baseband controller that has a memory to store instructions and a processor to execute the instructions. The instructions cause the processor to determine an antenna impedance based on the reflection coefficient parameters, and in response to determining that the antenna impedance is greater than or less than a threshold antenna impedance, iteratively tune the antenna using the multifunctional tuner.

Adaptive antenna tuning system

An electronic device may be provided with wireless circuitry and control circuitry. The wireless circuitry may include a phased antenna array. Sensors and other circuitry in the electronic device may generate sensor data such as accelerometer data, gyroscope data, magnetometer data, location data, and spatial ranging data. The wireless circuitry may establish and maintain one or more wireless links with external devices based on the sensor data as the device moves over time. For example, the wireless circuitry may perform physical layer beam adjustments, inter-radio access technology handovers, intra-radio access technology handovers, and/or dual connectivity adjustments based on the sensor data. This may allow the device to maintain one or more wireless links without having to sweep the signal beam of the phased antenna array over its entire field of view each time the device has moved.

Electronic devices having sensor-augmented wireless link management

An electronic device may be provided with a dielectric cover layer, a dielectric substrate, and a phased antenna array on the dielectric substrate for conveying millimeter wave signals through the dielectric cover layer. The array may include conductive traces mounted against the dielectric layer. The conductive traces may form patch elements or parasitic elements for the phased antenna array. The dielectric layer may have a dielectric constant and a thickness selected to form a quarter wave impedance transformer for the array at a wavelength of operation of the array. The substrate may include fences of conductive vias that laterally surround each of the antennas within the array. When configured in this way, signal attenuation, destructive interference, and surface wave generation associated with the presence of the dielectric layer over the phased antenna array may be minimized.

Electronic device antenna arrays mounted against a dielectric layer

An electronic device may be provided with wireless circuitry. The wireless circuitry may include one or more antennas. The antennas may include millimeter wave antenna arrays. Non-millimeter-wave antennas such as cellular telephone antennas may have conductive structures separated by a dielectric gap. In a device with a metal housing, a plastic-filled slot may form the dielectric gap. The conductive structures may be slot antenna structures, inverted-F antenna structures such as an inverted-F antenna resonating element and a ground, or other antenna structures. The plastic-filled slot may serve as a millimeter wave antenna window. A millimeter wave antenna array may be mounted in alignment with the millimeter wave antenna window to transmit and receive signals through the window. Millimeter wave antenna windows may also be formed from air-filled openings in a metal housing such as audio port openings.

Electronic devices with millimeter wave antennas and metal housings

An electronic device such as a wristwatch may be provided with a phased antenna array for conveying first signals at a first frequency between 10 GHz and 300 GHz and a non-millimeter wave antenna for conveying second signals at a second frequency below 10 GHz. The device may include conductive housing sidewalls and a display. Conductive structures in the display and the conductive housing sidewalls may define a slot element in the non-millimeter wave antenna. The phased antenna array may be mounted within the slot element, aligned with a spatial filter in the display, or aligned with a dielectric window in the conductive housing sidewalls. Control circuitry may process signals transmitted by the phased antenna array and a reflected version of the transmitted signals that has been received by the phased antenna array to detect a range between the device and an external object.

Electronic devices having millimeter wave ranging capabilities

An electronic device may be provided with a cover layer and a phased antenna array mounted against the cover layer. Each antenna in the array may include a first patch element that is directly fed using first and second feeds and a second patch element that is directly fed using third and fourth feeds. A slot element may be formed in the first patch element. The first patch element may radiate in a first frequency band through the cover layer. The slot element may radiate in a second frequency band that is higher than the first frequency band through the cover layer. The second patch element may indirectly feed the slot element. Locating the radiating elements for each frequency band in the same plane may allow the antenna to radiate through the cover layer in both frequency bands with satisfactory antenna efficiency.

Electronic device having dual-band antennas mounted against a dielectric layer

An electronic device may include a millimeter wave antenna having a ground plane, resonating element, feed, and parasitic element. The resonating element may include first, second, and third layer of traces that are shorted together. The second traces may be interposed between the first and third traces and the third traces may be interposed between the second traces and the parasitic. The third traces may have a width that is less than the widths of the second and third traces. The third traces and the parasitic may define a constrained volume having an associated cavity resonance that lies outside of a frequency band of interest. If desired, the resonating element may include a single layer of conductive traces having a grid of openings that disrupt impedance in a transverse direction, thereby mitigating the trapping of energy within the frequency band of interest between the resonating element and the parasitic.

Millimeter wave patch antennas

An electronic device may be provided with wireless circuitry. The wireless circuitry may include one or more antennas and transceiver circuitry such as millimeter wave transceiver circuitry. The antennas may be formed from metal traces on printed circuits. A flexible printed circuit may have an area on which the transceiver circuitry is mounted. Protruding portions may extend from the area on which the transceiver circuitry is mounted and may be separated from the area on which the transceiver circuitry is mounted by bends. Antenna resonating elements such as patch antenna resonating elements and dipole resonating elements may be formed on the protruding portions and may be used to transmit and receive millimeter wave antenna signals through dielectric-filled openings in a metal electronic device housing or a dielectric layer such as a display cover layer formed from glass or other dielectric.

Electronic device with millimeter wave antennas on printed circuits

An electronic device may include control circuitry, sensors, and wireless circuitry having antennas. The sensors may generate sensor data that is used by the control circuitry to identify an operating environment for the device. The sensor data may include a grip map generated by a touch-sensitive display, infrared facial recognition image signals or other image signals, an angle of arrival of sound received by a set of microphones, impedance data from an impedance sensor, and any other desired sensor data. The control circuitry may use the sensor data, radio-frequency spatial ranging data, information about whether audio is being played over an ear speaker, and/or information about communications protocols in use to identify the operating environment. The control circuitry may adjust antenna settings for the wireless circuitry based on the identified operating environment to ensure that the antennas operate with satisfactory antenna efficiency regardless of operating conditions.

Electronic device having adjustable antenna settings

An electronic device may be provided with wireless circuitry. The wireless circuitry may include one or more antennas. The antennas may include phased antenna arrays each of which includes multiple antenna elements. Phased antenna arrays may be mounted along edges of a housing for the electronic device, behind a dielectric window such as a dielectric logo window in the housing, in alignment with dielectric housing portions at corners of the housing, or elsewhere in the electronic device. A phased antenna array may include arrays of patch antenna elements on dielectric layers separated by a ground layer. A baseband processor may distribute wireless signals to the phased antenna arrays at intermediate frequencies over intermediate frequency signal paths. Transceiver circuits at the phased antenna arrays may include upconverters and downconverters coupled to the intermediate frequency signal paths.

Electronic device with millimeter wave antennas

An electronic device may include a housing and four antennas at respective corners of the housing. Cellular telephone transceiver circuitry may concurrently convey signals at one or more of the same frequencies over one or more of the four antennas using a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scheme. In order to isolate adjacent antennas, dielectric-filled openings may be formed in conductive walls of the housing to divide the walls into segments that are used to form resonating element arms for the antennas. If desired, first and second antennas may include resonating element arms formed from a wall without any gaps. The first and second antennas may include adjacent return paths. A magnetic field associated with currents for the first antenna may cancel out with a magnetic field associated with currents for the second antenna at the adjacent return paths, thereby serving to electromagnetically isolate the first and second antennas.

Multiple-input and multiple-output antenna structures

An electronic device may be provided with a display and a phased array antenna that transmits radio-frequency signals at frequencies greater than 10 GHz. The display may include a conductive layer that is used to form pixel circuitry and/or touch sensor electrodes. A filter may be formed from conductive structures within the conductive layer. The conductive structures may include an array of conductive patches separated by slots or may include conductive paths that define an array of slots. The filter may include an additional array of conductive patches stacked under the array of conductive patches to allow the slots to be narrower than would be resolvable to the unaided human eye. The periodicity of the conductive structures and the slots in the filter may be selected to tune a cutoff frequency of the filter to be greater than frequencies handled by the phased antenna array.

Electronic devices having antennas that radiate through a display

An electronic device may be provided with a phased antenna array. Each antenna in the array may include a patch element having first, second, third, and fourth positive antenna feed terminals. The first and second terminals may convey first signals with a first polarization. The third and fourth terminals may convey second signals with a second polarization. Phase shifting components such as phase shifting transmission line segments or phase shifter circuits may ensure that the first signals at the first terminal are out of phase with respect to the first signals at the second terminal and may ensure that the second signals at the third terminal are out of phase with respect to the second signals at the fourth terminal. This may allow antenna current density for both polarizations to be symmetrically distributed about a normal axis of the patch element.

Electronic devices having antennas with symmetric feeding

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Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Matthew A Mow