Design of 8 x 8 dual-band MIMO antenna array for 5G smartphone applications

A dual-band 8 x 8 antenna array operating in the long term evolution (LTE) band 42 (3400-3600 MHz) and LTE band 46 (5150-5925 MHz) for 5G communication multi-input multi-output (MIMO) operation in the smartphone is presented. The proposed dual-band antenna array element is composed of an L-shaped open slot antenna and a U-shaped monopole antenna. The measured results exhibited acceptable isolation (better than 12 dB) and good efficiency (more than 50%) across the two desired operation bandwidths. In addition to that, the proposed antenna array has also shown good MIMO performances with envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) lower than 0.1, and ergodic channel capacities higher than 38.8 bps/Hz in the operation bands. The hand phantom effects are also investigated, and the results show that the proposed antenna array can still exhibit good radiation and MIMO performances when operating under the single hand mode (SHM) and dual hands mode (DHM).