A DECISION-MAKING MODEL FOR SELECTING THE GSM MOBILE PHONE ANTENNA IN THE DESIGN PHASE TO INCREASE OVER ALL PERFORMANCE

The wireless link between a mobile phone and its surrounding crucially depends on the quality and properties of the mobile phone antenna. The process of antenna selection is a multi-criteria decision-making problem with con∞icting and diverse objectives. In this work, a model was built to select the best GSM mobile phone antenna in the design phase to increase the overall performance in the band. The model includes building an analytic hierarchy structure with a tree of hierarchical criteria and alternatives to ease the decision-making. The antenna options considered were limited to retractable whip antenna, loop chip antenna, monopole antenna, planar inverted F-antenna (PIFA), microstrip patch antenna, and printed slot antenna. An Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to assist in building the model and help draw decisions. As a result of the decision making process, the monopole antenna was found to be the best choice for the GSM mobile phone antenna. Expert Choice TM software was used to conduct the experimental assessments. The judgments were found to be consistent, precise and justiflable with narrow marginal inconsistency values. The paper also presents a thorough sensitivity analysis to demonstrate the confldence in the drawn conclusions.