Design of Closely Packed Pattern Reconfigurable Antenna Array for MIMO Terminals

In this communication, a compact pattern reconfigurable dual-antenna array is designed at 2.65 GHz for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) terminal applications, such as laptops. Each antenna is composed of two layers, i.e., the monopole layer and the planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) layer. By switching the p-i-n diodes on each layer, its radiation patterns can be varied between conical and boresight patterns. Two such identical antennas are placed side by side on a common ground plane for MIMO application, providing altogether four operating modes. The center-to-center separation between the antennas is 0.25 wavelength, to keep the overall array compact. To facilitate an isolation of above 17 dB over all the modes for this compact array, two decoupling techniques based on the decoupling slits and the shielding wall are effectively combined. The envelope correlation coefficients (ECCs) of the far-field patterns in the four modes are below 0.05 in free space, and below 0.1 for most cases in the indoor and outdoor scenarios. The only exception is the monopole-PIFA mode in the outdoor scenario, but the ECC is still below 0.3 for this case. The measured efficiencies of the antennas are between -1.7 (68%) and -0.7 dB (85%) for all the modes. Therefore, good diversity and MIMO performances are expected for the proposed design.