Design and Analysis of a Dual-Band Semitransparent MIMO Antenna for Automotive Applications

Abstract

This paper presents the design and development of a semitransparent antenna that can be used in automotive applications to support multiple wireless services. The proposed quad-port multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna is comprised of four orthogonally arranged identical semitransparent antenna elements on a transparent substrate. The MIMO antenna covers the 2.4 GHz band and 3.2–15 GHz band, supporting automotive/wireless applications such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, intelligent transport system (ITS), advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs), vehicle to infrastructure (V2I), vehicle to vehicle (V2V), vehicle to network (V2N), and vehicle to device (V2D). The parameters such as envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), diversity gain (DG), total active reflection coefficient (TARC), and channel capacity loss (CCL) are studied to evaluate antenna diversity performance. The antenna has an ECC of less than 0.15, DG of more than 9.85 dB, TARC of less than −10 dB, and CCL of less than 0.2 bits/s/Hz. The developed antenna can be easily installed on the mirror and windshield of the vehicles. Also, the housing effect and on-vehicle performance of the antenna at various positions in a car are investigated.