Eight-Port MIMO Antenna System for 2.6 GHz LTE Cellular Communications

In this paper, an eight-port antenna array operating in the 2.6 GHz band (2550–2650 MHz) for a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) mobile terminal is presented. The configuration of the design is composed of four pairs of low-profile dual-polarized slot antennas that are symmetrically placed at the corners of a mobile-phone mainboard. Each antenna pair consists of miniaturized petal-shaped slot resonators fed by two independent microstrip-feeding lines, thus facilitating radiation pattern and polarization diversity: when acting together, they facilitate multi-channel MIMO operation. The design offers good isolation, dualpolarization and full radiation coverage in a smartphone sized package. A lowcost FR-4 dielectric (ε = 4.4, δ = 0.02, and h = 0.8 mm) with a dimension of 75 × 150 mm2 is used as the PCB substrate. The characteristics of the smartphone antenna are examined using both simulations and measurements.