The present invention is a retractable/extendable diversity antenna that provides
the appropriate polarization in a horizontal orientation. The antenna structure
is placed within a Type II PCMCIA PC card package and may be extended or retracted
with one touch. The antenna structure is large enough to provide for the diversity
antenna design and may optionally be housed within a PCMCIA Type II PC Card. At
least one spring-loaded mechanism is used to extend the antenna structure beyond
the PCMCIA PC Card package and to provide stability while the antenna structure
is in the extended position. The diversity antenna configuration may consist of
either two miniature, planar antenna modules or two etched printed circuit board
contours that are spaced as far apart as possible with a minimum separation of
a quarter wave length distance in order to provide mitigation to radio multipath
fading effects. The antenna modules have orientations perpendicular to each other
such that the polar nulls representative of their radiation patterns remain spatially orthogonal.