Efficiency-Enhanced Open Earbud Earphone Antenna Using Dual-Feed Technique

TL;DR

This paper introduces a dual-feed antenna design for open earbud wireless earphones that significantly improves efficiency and bandwidth within limited space, ensuring reliable 2.4 GHz communication.

Contribution

It proposes a novel dual-feed excitation technique that enlarges the radiating aperture and enhances antenna efficiency in compact earbud designs.

Findings

Efficiency improvement exceeding 1 dB over single-feed antennas

Achieves -6 dB impedance bandwidth covering 2.4 GHz ISM band

Total efficiencies of -8.5 dB in free space and -9.5 dB on-head

Abstract

The stringent spatial constraints and the demand for high antenna efficiency in modern wireless earphones present significant design challenges. To address these issues, this paper presents and thoroughly investigates a novel earphone antenna design specifically tailored for open earbud wireless earphones. In contrast to traditional earphone antennas that rely on a conventional single-feed configuration, the proposed design introduces a dual-feed excitation technique incorporating a controlled phase difference between the two feeds. This innovative feeding strategy effectively enlarges the equivalent radiating aperture, thereby enhancing the overall radiation efficiency of the antenna system. Experimental and simulation results demonstrate that the dual-feed approach yields an efficiency improvement exceeding 1 dB when compared with standard single-feed designs. Furthermore, the fabricated prototype achieves a -6 dB impedance bandwidth that fully encompasses the 2.4 GHz ISM band, ensuring stable wireless communication performance. The measured total efficiencies reach -8.5 dB in free space and -9.5 dB under on-head conditions. These results confirm that the proposed antenna successfully achieves high efficiency and reliable performance within the extremely limited volume of an earbud device, demonstrating strong potential for integration into next-generation compact wireless earphones.