Eight-element fifth-generation multiple-input multiple-output antenna designed by modal currents cancelation

An antenna decoupling method based on modal control is proposed in this paper. Different from the previous characteristic mode decoupling methods, which excite one of the characteristic modes from each port, a pair of decoupling modes is excited simultaneously at each port. To validate our method, a head-to-head antenna pair is analyzed and designed. According to the characteristic mode analysis, an inductor-loaded coupled sheet is introduced for the head-to-head antenna pair. Thus, the resonant frequencies of decoupling modes can be tuned individually. To further demonstrate the flexibility of our design, an eight-element multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna composed of two integrated four-element blocks is designed, fabricated, and measured. The proposed antennas show good impedance matching, isolation, and diversity performance varying from 3.35 to 3.71 GHz. Both simulated and measured results show the 8 x 8 MIMO system can achieve isolations of better than 11.5 dB and envelope correlation coefficients of less than 0.2 of each port.

Automated summary

An antenna decoupling method based on modal control is proposed in this paper, which excites a pair of decoupling modes simultaneously to achieve decoupling. The effectiveness of this method is validated through the analysis and design of a head-to-head antenna pair. Additionally, an eight-element MIMO antenna is designed, fabricated, and measured to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method.