4-Port MIMO Antenna for Sub-1 GHz, IoT, and Sub-6 GHz 5G New Radio Applications

Abstract

A 4-port planar multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system design is proposed. The antenna elements are modified meandered wideband antennas which cover frequencies from 674 MHz to 1 GHz, 1.9 GHz to 2.1 GHz, 3.175 GHz to 3.476 GHz, 4.529 GHz to 4.761 GHz, and 5.254 to 5.513 GHz for long term evolution (LTE), Internet of Things (IoT), and sub-6 GHz applications and thus can be used for robotic navigation, logistics, healthcare, tracking, transportation, etc. Due to very small envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) between the ports (< 0.5), the MIMO configuration can be efficiently implemented which helps in increasing the data rates. It is very compact in size and thus can be used for portable handheld devices. Since there is the problem of current localization due to common ground, the future work aims at minimizing coupling and improving the impedance matching using novel decoupling networks. These MIMO antennas are connected to a common slotted ground plane. Antenna simulation has been done using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Microwave Studio Suite simulator. A low cost FR-4 substrate with dimensions 65 mm 90 mm 1.6 mm has been used for antenna fabrication, and experimental results are obtained using an anechoic chamber and a vector network analyser. ECC and realized gain of the antenna are also obtained experimentally and are almost similar to the simulated results.