Simulation and Design of MIMO Antennas for Applications in UWB, 5G and Smartphone Technologies
MIMO antenna, 5G, WLAN, isolation, smartphone.
This work presents three MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) antennas for applications in modern wireless communication systems. The first proposed MIMO antenna has compact dimensions, high isolation between ports and can be used for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications; the second proposed MIMO antenna is a miniaturized MIMO antenna, with high isolation between the ports and which can be used in ultra-wideband (UWB) applications; the proposed third MIMO antenna can be used for smartphone applications and covers the lower and upper WLAN bands, as well as 5G band. Among the advantages that 5G offers, we can highlight ultra-fast speeds, low latency, large channel capacity, high spectral efficiency and massive connection density. Then, MIMO antennas have been extensively studied for applications in this technology, because they can considerably increase the data rate and the channel capacity, due to the channel capacity being proportional to the number of antennas used in transmission and reception, as well they can also improve the link reliability of wireless communications systems through multi-path data transmission and reception. The proposed MIMO antennas were designed using ANSYS HFSS software for numerical characterization, and the prototypes were manufactured with FR-4 dielectric and measured, showing good agreement between simulated and measured results. A key performance parameter of MIMO antennas, the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), is analyzed and presents good results for the three proposed MIMO antennas. Furthermore, for the proposed antenna for smartphone applications, the effects caused by the user's hands are investigated, which is an extremely important performance parameter.