High-performance multiple-input multiple-output antenna system for 5g mobile terminals

Abstract

In this paper, the systematic design of a multiple antenna system for 5G smartphone operating at 3.5 GHz for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) operation in smartphones is proposed. The smartphone is preferred to be lightweight, thin, and attractive, and as a result metal casings have become popular. Using conventional antennas, such as a patch antenna, Inverted-F antennas, or monopole, in proximity to metal casing leads to decreasing its total efficiency and bandwidth. Therefore, a slot antenna embedded in the metal casing can be helpful, with good performance regarding bandwidth and total efficiency. The proposed multiple antenna system adopted the unit open-end slot antenna fed by Inverted-L microstrip with tuning stub. The measured S-parameters results agree fairly with the numerical results. It attains 200 MHz bandwidth at 3.5 GHz with ports isolation of (≤-13 dB) for any two antennas of the system. The influence of the customer’s hand for the proposed multiple antenna system is also considered, and the MIMO channel capacity is computed. The maximum achievable MIMO channel capacity based on the measured result is 31.25 bps/Hz and is about 2.7 times of 2 × 2 MIMO operation.