Apple Inc.

Salih Yarga

Mattia Pascolini

Enrique Ayala Vazquez

Robert W Schlub

Hongfei Hu

Erdinc Irci

Qingxiang Li

Ming-Ju Tsai

Matthew A Mow

Liang Han

Yijun Zhou

Xu Han

Hao Xu

Nanbo Jin

Miroslav Samardzija

Erica J Tong

Yuehui Ouyang

Carlo Di Nallo

Bilgehan Avser

Ming Chen

Jingni Zhong

Ruben Caballero

Benjamin Shane Bustle

Christopher T Cheng

Jiang Zhu

Yi Jiang

Jayesh Nath

Rodney Andres Gomez Angulo

Jennifer M Edwards

Thomas E Biedka

Tyler B Cater

Miguel C Christophy

Anand Lakshmanan

Georgios Atmatzakis

Xu Gao

Haozhan Tian

Tiejun Yu

Mohsen Salehi

Daniel William Jarvis

Stephen Robert McClure

Sean S Corbin

Ian A Spraggs

Harish Rajagopalan

Erik Andrew Uttermann

Joshua G Nickel

Victor C Lee

Boon Wai Shiu

Gordon Michael Coutts

James G Judkins

Taylor Harrison Gilbert

Yuancheng Xu

Christopher J Durning

Jonathan M Lee

Sherry Lee

Conor P Lenahan

Iyappan Ramachandran

Salome Bavetta

Bhaskara R Rupakula

Laura M Burke

Javier Gomez Tagle

Emily McMilin

Gareth L Rose

Soroush Akbarzadeh

Seyed Mohammad Amjadi

Denis J Lin

Nirali Shah

Aobo Li

Sunitha Seshadri

Ahmed Ali Abdelhaliem Nafe

Woonyong Bae

Joel Ravi

Nicholas S Reimnitz

Benjamin Hane Bustle

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 include first and second antennas formed from respective first and second segments of a housing. The first antenna may have a first feed coupled to the first segment by a first switch and coupled to the first segment by a first conductive trace. The second antenna may have a second feed coupled to the second segment by a second switch and coupled to the second segment by a second conductive trace. The first segment may be separated from the second segment by a single gap, a data connector may pass through the second segment, and the antennas may selectively cover a low band. Alternatively, the first segment may be separated from the second segment by a third segment and two gaps, the data connector may pass through the third segment, and the first and second antennas may concurrently cover the low band.

Electronic devices with multiple low band antennas

An electronic device may have peripheral conductive housing structures, a display frame, a support plate, a logic board, and an antenna. The antenna may have a resonating element that includes a first slot between the logic board and a segment of the peripheral conductive housing structures, a second slot between the display frame and the segment, and optionally a third slot between the support plate and the segment. The slots may be at least partially overlapping, may have respective lengths, may be located at respective distances from a cover layer for the display, and may collectively receive radio-frequency signals in a frequency band such as the L5 GPS band. Switching circuitry and filter circuitry may be coupled to the antenna feed and/or to the antenna feed (s) of one or more adjacent antennas in the electronic device to help to isolate the antennas from each other.

Electronic devices with distributed slot antenna structures

An electronic device may be provided with a housing and an antenna having a resonating element. The resonating element may have first and second arms extending from opposing sides of a feed. The first arm and a portion of the housing may radiate in a cellular ultra-high band. The first arm may have a fundamental mode that radiates in a first ultra-wideband (UWB) communications band at 6.5 GHz. The second arm may have a fundamental mode that radiates in a 5.0 GHz wireless local area network band. The first and second arms may have a harmonic mode that radiates in a second UWB communications band at 8.0 GHz. The antenna may convey radio-frequency signals in each of these communications bands without the need for adjusting components in the antenna to switch between the UWB communications bands.

Electronic devices having enclosure-coupled multi-band antenna structures

An electronic device may have peripheral conductive housing structures divided into first and second segments. First and second antennas may be formed from the segments and may be fed using a flexible printed circuit structure. The structure may include a first substrate attached to the first segment, a second substrate soldered to the first substrate and attached to the second segment, and a third substrate soldered to the second substrate. Third and fourth antennas may be formed on the first substrate whereas fifth and sixth antennas are be formed on the second substrate. The second substrate may be folded and may have a lateral area oriented perpendicular to the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth antennas. Modularly forming the structure in this way may maximize the flexibility with which the structure can accommodate other components, thereby minimizing the space consumption associated with mounting and feeding the antennas without sacrificing wireless performance.

Flexible printed circuit structures for electronic device antennas

An electronic device may be provided with an antenna having a resonating element. The resonating element may have first and second arms extending from opposing sides of a feed. The first arm may have a fundamental mode that radiates in a first communications band such as a 5.0 GHz wireless local area network band. The second arm may have a fundamental mode that radiates in a second communications band such as one or more cellular ultra-high bands. The second resonating element arm may have a harmonic mode that radiates in first and second ultra-wideband (UWB) communications bands. The antenna may include a tunable component that is adjustable between first and second states. The second arm may radiate in the first UWB communications band while the tunable component is in the first state and in the second UWB communications band while the tunable component is in the second state.

Electronic devices having multi-band antenna structures

An electronic device may have wireless circuitry with antennas. An antenna resonating element arm for an antenna may be formed from peripheral conductive structures running along the edges of a device housing. The peripheral conductive structures may form housing sidewalls. A slot may be machined into a metal housing that separates the housing sidewalls from a planar rear housing portion that forms a ground for an antenna. The slot may be filled with plastic filler. A parasitic antenna resonating element arm that supports an antenna resonance at high band frequencies may be embedded within the plastic filler. The parasitic antenna resonating element may be formed from a portion of the planar rear housing portion.

Electronic device antenna with embedded parasitic arm

An electronic device may be provided with wireless circuitry. The wireless circuitry may include multiple antennas and transceiver circuitry. The antennas may include antenna structures at opposing first and second ends of the electronic device. The antenna structures at a given end of the device may include antenna structures that are shared between multiple antennas. The electronic device may include a first antenna with an inverted-F antenna resonating element formed from portions of a peripheral conductive housing structure and may have an antenna ground that is separated from the antenna resonating element by a gap. A return path may bridge the gap. The electronic device may also include a second antenna that includes the antenna ground and an additional antenna resonating element. The antenna resonating element of the second antenna may be parasitically coupled to the return path of the inverted-F antenna at given frequencies.

Electronic device having shared antenna structures

A consumer electronic product includes a switchable inductor array coupled to the RF antenna, the switchable inductor array comprising inductive elements and a switch circuit coupled to the inductor array to select at least one of the inductive elements and couple the selected inductive element with the RF antenna. The product can further include an assembly having a mesh that is strengthened by a stiffener. A multi-layer adhesive have a conductive layer that can be used to shield the RF antenna and adhesive layers that can provide adhesion between the stiffener and the housing of the product. The assembly can be covered by a cowling that is made of metal to provide further shielding. To reduce potential coupling between the RF antenna and the cowling, the cowling can have a portion that is formed of plastic to distance its metal portion from the antenna.

Switched antenna assembly

An electronic device may include an antenna having a resonating element, an antenna ground, and a feed. First and second tunable components may be coupled to the resonating element. Adjustable matching circuitry may be coupled to the feed. Control circuitry may use the first tunable component to tune a midband antenna resonance when sensor circuitry identifies that the device is being held in a right hand and may use the second tunable component to tune the midband resonance when the sensor circuitry identifies that the device is being held in a left hand. For tuning a low band resonance, the control circuitry may place the antenna in different tuning states by sequentially adjusting a selected one of the matching circuitry and the tunable components, potentially reverting to a previous tuning state at each step in the sequence. This may ensure that antenna efficiency is satisfactory regardless of antenna loading conditions.

Electronic device antennas having multi-band tuning capabilities

An electronic device may be provided with antenna structures. The antenna structures may be coupled to non-near-field communications circuitry such as cellular telephone transceiver circuitry or wireless local area network circuitry. When operated at non-near-field communication frequencies, the antenna structures may be configured to serve as one or more inverted-F antennas or other antennas for supporting far field wireless communications. Proximity sensor circuitry and near-field communications circuitry may also be coupled to the antenna structures. When operated at proximity sensor frequencies, the antenna structures may be used in forming capacitive proximity sensor electrode structures. When operated at near-field communications frequencies, the antenna structures may be used in forming an inductive near-field communications loop antenna.

Antennas for near-field and non-near-field communications

An electronic device may be provided with wireless circuitry and control circuitry. The wireless circuitry may include multiple antennas and transceiver circuitry. An antenna in the electronic device may have an inverted-F antenna resonating element formed from portions of a peripheral conductive electronic device housing structure and may have an antenna ground that is separated from the antenna resonating element by a gap. The antenna may also include an indirectly-fed antenna resonating element that is indirectly fed by a harmonic mode of the inverted-F antenna resonating element via near field electromagnetic coupling. The indirectly-fed antenna resonating element may be a slot. The antenna ground may define at least three edges of the slot and the slot may be aligned with a dielectric-filled gap in the peripheral conductive housing structures. An adjustable circuit may be coupled across the slot to tune the indirectly-fed antenna resonating element.

Electronic devices with indirectly-fed adjustable slot elements

An electronic device may have wireless circuitry with antennas. An antenna resonating element arm for an antenna may be formed from conductive housing structures running along the edges of a device. The antenna may have a pair of switchable return paths that bridge a slot between the antenna resonating element and an antenna ground. An adjustable component and a feed may be coupled in parallel across the slot. The adjustable component may switch a capacitor into use or out of use and the return paths may be selectively opened and closed to compensate for antenna loading due to the presence of external objects near the electronic device.

Electronic device antenna with switchable return paths

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Salih Yarga