Compact Quadruple Band MIMO Antenna for 5G

Mobile Applications
Xueliang Shi, Ming Zhang, Huailin Wen, and Jun Wang
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
No. 360, Jiangshu Road, Hangzhou, P. R. China
{xueliang.shi, richie.zhang, wenhuailin, justin.wangjun}@huawei.com

Abstract—A design of compact quadruple band MIMO

antenna for 5G mobile applications is proposed. The MIMO
antenna consists of 8 antenna elements, each two of them are
symmetrically placed on the orthogonal frame corners of the
substrate, closely located to each other and connected by a
short neutral line. Each antenna element consists of two
feeding ports which operate at different frequencies. One
feeding port operates at 3.5-3.9 GHz and the other feeding port
operates at three bands, which are 2.3-2.5 GHz, 3.3-3.5 GHz
and 4.25-4.45 GHz. The radiation efficiencies of all four bands
are above 50% and ECC of the antenna elements are below 0.2,
the calculated ergodic channel capacities with a 20 dB SNR at
four bands reach to 87% of the ideal case at 3.6 GHz, 87.5% at
2.4 GHz, 82.7% at 3.4 GHz and 83.2% at 4.3 GHz, respectively,
which are close to the ideal case of 8×8 MIMO system.

Index Terms— quadruple band antenna; MIMO antenna;

5G mobile communication; mobile antennas; channel capacity

I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile networks have been developed rapidly in the last
few years and preliminary interest and discussions about a
possible 5th generation (5G) standard has captured the
attention and imagination of researchers and engineers
around world [1]. In order to achieve high data rate than 4G,
Multi-input Multi-output (MIMO) will become one of the
core technologies for 5G operation [2]. For mobile device,
MIMO antennas will also need to be introduced to improve
the system throughput. Two or more antennas with high
isolation and low envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) for
mobile device are required and should be placed in a limited
space. However, when two antennas are placed closely, the
isolation should be low and the mutual coupling will
decrease the efficiency of antenna, increase the ECC and
then result in decreasing the MIMO performance [3].
Therefore, arranging multiple antennas into a mobile device
or smartphone with high performance is now a challenging
topic for mobile antenna researchers and engineers.
In recent years, many different MIMO antennas for mobile
devices have been reported [4-6]. V. Viikari and co-workers
designed an eight element mobile antenna array for the LTE
3.5 GHz band (3400–3600 MHz), and the ergodic channel
capacity of approximately 15.5 bps/Hz can be achieved in a
2 × 8 MIMO system at a 20-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
[4]. K. Wong and co-workers published a ten elements
MIMO mobile antenna for 3.6 GHz and the maximum
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna
channel capacity can reach to 47 bps/Hz with a 20 dB SNR
in a 10×10 MIMO system [5]. M. Li proposed an eight
element dual polarized mobile antenna at 2.6 GHz with high
isolation and low ECC, the ergodic channel capacity in an
8×8 MIMO system is about 40 bps/Hz with a 20 dB SNR
[6]. Most of the 8 antenna papers are one band and some of
them are dual bands. For mobile phone application, one
antenna should cover as many bands as it can.
In order to reduce the mutual coupling between two
closely placed antennas, many different techniques have
been proposed, and neutral line technique is a common way
to increase isolation [9]. People use proper structure of
neutral line to improve one frequency band and multiple
lines to improve multiple bands. The lines always are
comparable to quarter wavelength and a space will be needed
to accommodate the neutral line and the antenna dimension
which is quite limited in mobile device will be increased.
This will also increase the complex of closely space MIMO
antennas design and fabrication. Diversity techniques
(spatial, polarization, and pattern diversity) can also be used
to enhance antenna isolation and reduce ECC, and it can be
verified than using diversity technique can increase channel
 Fig. 2. Simulated S parameters of port 1
capacity in some scattering environment [10].
In this letter, a compact quadruple band 8-element MIMO
antenna is proposed. Antenna elements are located on the 4
corners of substrate and each closely placed two elements are
connected by a straight short neutral line. Each antenna
element has two feeding ports operating at four different
bands. All four operating bands have high isolations between
feeds, because of different frequencies have different
decoupling mechanisms, which are neutral line decoupling,
orthogonal polarization diversity and spatial diversity. The
antenna structure is simple and easy to fabricate, can be
placed at the corners of a 5G mobile handset.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The geometry of the proposed antenna design is shown in
Fig. 1. The substrate of the antenna is FR4 with 4.4
dielectric constant, 0.02 loss tangent. The overall dimension
of the structure is 136 mm × 68 mm × 6 mm and the size of
the substrate is 136 mm × 68 mm × 1 mm, which is also
considered as the ground plane. A FR4 loop frame with a
thickness of 1mm and a height of 5 mm is located on the
edges of the substrate and the antenna elements are placed at
the corners of the FR4 frame symmetrically and each pair of
antennas are connected by a short neutral line, as shown in
Fig. 1 (a). Fig. 1 (b) shows the prototype of 8 MIMO
antenna design. The antenna elements are folded and located
both on the sides and the bottom substrate, which may be
suitable for 5G mobile device application. Because MIMO
antenna will be incorporated in user equipment for 5G
application, there will not be enough space and ground
clearance to place so many antennas in a mobile device and
the utilization of frames can be helpful.
AS we all know, 3G and 4G antennas (main antenna and
diversity antenna) are placed at the top and bottom of a
cellphone. For small cellphones, if the corner is used to
place data/mimo antennas, there may not be enough space
for main/diversity antenna. Nowadays, cellphones have
larger screens and more spaces at the top and bottom will be
available for main/diversity antennas, even the corner of the
cellphone is used for data/mimo antenna. For example, the
Fig. 3. Simulated S parameters of port 3
width of Huawei Mate 9 is 78 mm, and each corner antenna
needs 18 mm space, there still will be 42 mm space left for
main antenna, almost half the width of cellphone. Many
works have been published on compact size 3G and 4G
antenna. J. Anguera proposed 4 x 4 MIMO 3G and 4G
antenna with a length of 10 mm [11], H. Liu proposed 4
MIMO cell phone antenna and two data antenna and one
main antenna are place on the top of cellphone [12]. So we
believe there still will be enough space for us to place a 3G
and 4G full band antenna between two corner antennas at
the top/ bottom of cellphone.
Fig. 1 (c) shows the antenna pair structures to indicate the
concept of this design. The antenna elements are
symmetrically placed along the corners of the substrate,
close to each other and connected by a short neutral line.
Each antenna element has two feeding ports and
symmetrical ports operates at the same frequency bands. In
this design, port 1 and port 2 operate at 3.5-3.9 GHz and the
mutual coupling between the two ports is reduced by the
connected neutral line. Port 3 and port 4 operate at three
bands, which are 2.3-2.5 GHz, 3.3-3.5 GHz and 4.25-4.45
GHz. The antenna elements are unfolded and the detailed
dimension is shown in Fig. 1 (d). The overall size for the
frame part is 18 mm by 6 mm and the size for the bottom
part is 14.5 mm by 3 mm.
The resonance mechanisms of four bands are explained as
follows: band 2.3-2.5 GHz is the lowest frequency and the
whole antenna element takes part in the energy radiation;
the bottom part and the low area of side part of the structure
takes part in the radiation of band 3.3-3.5 GHz; for band
4.25-4.45 GHz, the low area of the frame part plays an
important role of radiation; the band of 3.5-3.9 GHz uses the
same area to radiation as band 3.3-3.5 GHz, with different
feeding ports.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The simulated and measured S parameters of port 1 are
shown in Fig. 2. The 10-dB impedance bandwidth of port 1
is 3.5-3.9 GHz. The simulated S12 without neutral line
shows high coupling at the operating band. Because of the
 dB (Gaintotal) Port 1 3.6 GHz Port 2 3.6 GHz

-20 -9 2
Z Z
Z Y Y
Y

X X
X
Port 3 3.4 GHz Port 3 4.3 GHz
Port 3 2.4 GHz
Z Z
Z
Y Y Y

X X
X
Port 4 2.4 GHz
Port 4 3.4 GHz Port 4 4.3 GHz

Z Z Z
Y Y Y Fig. 5. Total radiation efficiency of the port 1 and port 3

X X X

Fig. 4. Measured far field radiation patterns

neutral line decoupling is utilized between port 1 and port 2,

S12 with neutral line is below -10dB at operating band. Also,
the simulated results and measured results shows good
agreements.
The simulated and measured S parameters of port 3 are
shown in Fig. 3. Port 3 operates at three bands, which are,
which are 2.3-2.5 GHz, 3.3-3.5 GHz and 4.25-4.45 GHz.
The mutual couplings of two bands of 2.3-2.5 GHz and 3.3-
3.5 GHz are reduced by orthogonal polarization diversity
because of orthogonal positions of two antenna elements.
The coupling of band 4.25-4.45 GHz is reduced by spatial
diversity because of high frequency and large enough
antenna space.
The far field radiation pattern of each port operating at
four bands are shown in Fig.4. Because of orthogonal
placement of two radiation elements, the maximum radiation
direction of different ports are almost orthogonal at the same
frequency which can reduce the coupling between antennas.
Due to the compact structure, it is difficult to optimize
antenna structure to obtain high isolation for all four bands,
so different isolation enhancement methods are utilized for
different frequencies. For 3.5-3.9 GHz band, a neutral line is
connected the two symmetrical feeding ports and an isolation
of above 10 dB is achieved. For 2.3-2.5 GHz and 3.3-3.5
GHz bands, the mutual couplings are reduced by orthogonal
polarization because of orthogonal positions of two antenna
elements. The coupling of band 4.15-4.35 GHz is reduced by
spatial diversity because of high frequency and large enough
antenna space.
Fig. 5 shows the antenna total radiation efficiency (taking
into account reflection losses) for port 1 and port 3. For port
1, the simulated efficiency reach up to 67% at 3.66 GHz and
the efficiency is higher than 50% from 3.5 GHz to 3.9 GHz.
For port 3, the highest simulated efficiency for three
Fig. 6. Calculated ECC from measured radiation pattern
different bands are 60% at 2.4 GHz, 56% at 3.4 GHz and
64% at 4.3 GHz. The 50% efficiency bands are 2.3-2.5
GHz, 3.3-3.5 GHz and 4.25-4.45 GHz. So for 50%
efficiency bands, port 1 and port 3 covers four bands, 1GHz
band in total. As we all know, the radiation efficiency of
mobile phone antenna is quite low, so if we set the threshold
value of efficiency as 20%, then port 1 and port 2 can cover
from 2 GHz to 2.6 GHz and 3 GHz to 5 GHz, which may
include almost all 5G frequency bands. Note that when one
antenna element is excited, the remaining antennas are
terminated to 50 Ohm load. So in the case the results for
simulation and measurement are match and it is noticed that
due to error in manufacturing, there is a slight frequency
shift. Also agreement between the simulated results and
measured results are shown in Fig. 5.
To evaluate the MIMO antenna performance, radiation
efficiency is not the only parameter and ECC should be
considered. Both efficiency and ECC can affect the MIMO
antenna performance. ECC values between each two antenna
need to be studied. Because of the space, the antennas from
different pair have low ECC and can be neglected. Fig.5
shows the calculated ECC from the measured complex

Fig. 7. Calculated ergodic channel capacities from measured radiation
pattern
electric-filed patterns for the two antenna elements in a pair,
using ECC calculation tool of Satimo Starlab. For the ECC
results, the propagation environment is assumed to have
uniform incident wave and the cross polarization power ratio
of the incident wave is set to 0 dB. So according to the result,
the ECC values for all the bands are less than 0.2, which are
low enough and makes the MIMO antenna design promising
for MIMO application.
Now channel capacity is widely used to evaluate MIMO
antenna performance and the maximum ergodic channel
capacities (bits per second per Hertz) of the fabricated 8-
element MIMO antenna in an 8h8 MIMO system is
calculated from the well-known Shannon capacity formula
[13] and the results are shown in Fig. 7. It is assumed that the
8 transmitting antennas are uncorrelated with 100% antenna
efficiency and the wave propagation channels are
independently and identically distributed with Rayleigh
fading environment. The ergodic channel capacities are
averaged over 10,000 Rayleigh fading realizations with a
SNR of 20 dB. As shown in Fig. 7, the channel capacities of
the MIMO antenna at all four bands are above 30 bps/Hz.
Compared to the upper limit for 8h8 MIMO system, which
is around 44 bps/Hz with a 20 dB SNR, the channel
capacities of the proposed antenna at four bands are above
70% of the ideal case. For port 1, the 8 MIMO antenna can
reach up to 38.3 bps/Hz at 3.6 GHz, which is 87% of the
ideal case. For port 3, the highest channel capacities for three
bands are 38.5 bps/Hz at 2.4 GHz, 36.4 bps/Hz at 3.4 GHz
and 36.6 bps/Hz at 4.3GHz, which are all close to the ideal
case. As we can see, due to the MIMO multiplex, 70%
radiation efficiency antenna with low ECC can reach up to
90% of ideal channel capacity and 30% radiation efficiency
antenna with low ECC also can get almost 70% of ideal
channel capacity. Therefore, the proposed quadruple band
MIMO antenna is a suitable design in MIMO system, and the
antenna can be used in carrier aggregation applications
because of multiple bands and multiple feeding ports.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
A quadruple band 8-element MIMO antenna with compact
size and simple structure is proposed and demonstrated. The
antenna consists of 4 pairs of two folded structures which are
used as radiation elements to resonate at four different bands.
Each pair of antenna elements are symmetrically placed on
the orthogonal frames and bottom, and closely located to
each other. The two antenna elements are connected by a
short neutral line which can be used to reduce the mutual
coupling at one operating band. Each element is feed by two
ports. One port is located on the frame of the substrate and
operates at 3.5-3.9 GHz, the other is located on the bottom of
the structure and operates at three different bands, 2.3-2.5
GHz, 3.3-3.5GHz and 4.25-4.45 GHz. The radiation
efficiencies of all four bands mentioned are above 50% and
ECC of the antenna elements are low enough for the antenna
to get good performance in a MIMO system. The calculated
ergodic channel capacities with a 20 dB SNR at four bands
reach to 87% of the ideal case at 3.6 GHz, 87.5% at 2.4
GHz, 82.7% at 3.4 GHz and 83.2% at 4.3 GHz, respectively,
which are close to the ideal case of 8h8 MIMO system.
By placing each pair of antennas at each corner of the
device, proposed MIMO antenna obtained good performance
in MIMO system and the design is feasible for mobile
device, especially for 5G mobile handset applications which
will introduce MIMO antennas in mobile handsets.
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