Eight Element Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) Antenna for 5G Mobile Applications

Abstract

This work presents a systematic design of high performance eight element antenna array for a 5G mobile terminal operating at 2.6/3.5 GHz bands. The proposed eight element slot antenna array based on unit monopole slot antenna embedded in the metal casing or ground resonates at fundamental mode at 2.6 GHz. The antenna array is developed from four antennas (open-end slot antenna) etched near to the corner edges of the printed circuited board with supported pairs of vertically mounted slot antennas in middle section of the long edge ground plane. This combination of the antenna elements provided pattern diversity and enabled the smartphone in the reception of the signal in a different direction. The impedance bandwidth based on −10 dB return loss criteria cover from 2.4 GHz to 3.6 GHz includes the two allocated bands of (2400 MHz to 2600 MHz) and (3400 MHz to 3600 MHz) for 5G cellular communication systems. The vital MIMO performance measures as envelope correlation coefficient or ECC is less than 0.2 for any two antenna array meeting the required standard of less than 0.5 alongside the mean effective gain or MEG ratio of any two antenna meeting the required standard of less than 3 dB for power balance and optimal diversity performance. As modern smartphone demand desires slim handsets, the after mentioned compact multiple antenna structure can be easily implemented for the future smartphones as it utilizes the conductive sheet or chassis and the middle vertically mounted antenna do not use the additional space of the chassis or ground. The customer hand or human hand effect on the multiple antenna array to mimic the use of mobile phone customer is also studied. The maximum MIMO Channel capacity based on measured result is 34.25bps/Hz and is about 3 times of $2\\times2$ MIMO operations.