Ten-Port MIMO Inverted-F Antenna for LTE Bands 43/48/49 Bands Smartphone Applications

Abstract

This paper presents a design and performance analysis of a 10-element 5G massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (m-MIMO) antenna array for sub-6 GHz mobile handsets, specifically for Long Term Evolution (LTE) bands 43 (3600–3800 MHz) and 48/49 (3550–3700 MHz) applications. The proposed antenna array consists of ten closely spaced inverted-F antennas with a compact size of 20 × 9 mm2 of a single element. The proposed antenna array provides high efficiency and low correlation between the antenna elements, which result in increased data rate and enhanced signal quality. The performance of the antenna array is evaluated in terms of the radiation pattern, diversity gain, efficiency, and correlation coefficient. The simulation and measured results show that the proposed antenna array achieves an approximate peak gain of 2.8 dBi and a total efficiency of 65% at the resonance frequency of 37 GHz and a low correlation coefficient of 0.07 between the adjacent antenna elements. Moreover, the single and two-hand modes are also given in order to highlight the potential of such a structure as a smart mobile terminal. The simulated results are discovered to be in excellent agreement with the measured values. We think this structure has a bright future in the next generation of smart mobile phones based on the performance and the measured findings.