Integrated MIMO Antennas Using Connected Arrays

Antenna solutions for mobile handheld devices are very important and are very challenging to design. While multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) was a major enabling technology for fourth generation mobile terminals, and dealing with packing multiple multi-standard antennas within a small proximity was a major challenge, the upcoming fifth generation (5G) wireless standard will put more demand on the user terminal design and thus new enabling technologies are to be integrated. The 5G standard is to provide a large increase in data throughput capability when compared to its predecessor. This increase will be achieved via using MIMO antenna systems at the mobile terminal along with the use the higher frequency bands with much larger bandwidth than the ones used for 4G. Several potential candidate bands have been proposed but no standard is out yet. The 5G mobile terminal will have microwave and higher frequency bands (i.e. close to or at millimeter-waves) based antenna systems coexisting on the same backplane. The concept of connected antenna arrays (CAA) has been recently used to achieve wideband antenna systems. In this work, we will come up with an integrated microwave MIMO antenna system operating around 2 GHz and with at least 2-elements and 100MHz of bandwidth along with another 2-element MIMO antenna arrays operating at a higher-frequency above 16 GHz with at least 1GHz of operating bandwidth based on the concept of CAA. Both antenna systems will be placed along the periphery of a standard mobile phone back plane of 120 x 70 mm2. The design will provide the first multi-band multi-standard MIMO integrated within a single mobile handset wireless terminal size based on the concept of CAA supporting 4G and future 5G communication standards.