MIMO antenna system of two closely-positioned PIFAs with high isolation

S. Zhang, J. Xiong and S. He

A two-PIFA antenna system for diversity/MIMO applications is designed with a narrow inter-PIFA spacing of only 3 mm (less than 0.024 wavelength). The proposed antenna system can cover the WLAN band (2.4 2.48 GHz) with an isolation of better than 220 dB and a maximum isolation of 237.1 dB at the central frequency. The mechanism is explained. The measured peak efciency and gain, and the calculated envelope correlation coefcient are 75.02%, 3.48 dBi and 0.11, respectively.

Introduction: As a promising solution for next-generation communication systems, the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technique can increase the capacity or reliability without additional power or spectrum [1]. To obtain a high data rate, high isolation between antenna elements is always desired. On the other hand, the MIMO antennas have to be compact enough when mounted on the PCB of compact MIMO terminals such as laptop computers, USB dongles etc. In recent years, many techniques have been proposed to reduce the mutual coupling of antennas in a MIMO terminal [2 4]. In [2], Murch et al. presented a structure of LC property through etching several slots in the middle of the PCB, and achieved a distance of less than 0.1 wavelength between two inverted-F antennas (PIFAs). Another method to further enhance isolation was given in [3], where a decoupling element was inserted between two PIFAs with an interantenna spacing of 0.0294 wavelength. In [4], a suspended neutralisation strip was positioned (0.027 wavelength) outside two PIFAs, but the isolation is only around 210 dB. In this Letter, a two-PIFA antenna system is proposed for compact diversity/MIMO terminals. Compared with previously reported techniques [2 4], the antenna system exhibits a better isolation performance and less inter-antenna spacing. This diversity/MIMO antenna system can be used in the PCMCIA card of a laptop computer and it covers the 2.4 GHz band for a wireless local area network (WLAN).
W Ht

between the two PIFAs. The physical mechanism is: when one PIFA is fed, the in-between resonant radiator (formed by the neighbouring edges of the two PIFAs) with the matched frequency will be excited and the coupling current tending to ow from one PIFA to the other will be trapped in the two edges of the resonant radiator (instead of the other PIFA), and consequently the power will not be coupled to the other PIFA but radiated into free space. Thus the direct coupling can be suppressed effectively. The best isolation occurs when the resonant frequency of the formed resonant radiator matches the operating frequency of the PIFA (determined by (1)). To achieve a good matching, we remove a rectangular block on the full shorting wall (see the bottom part of Fig. 1). With properly chosen values for Ws and Hs , the PIFAs and the resonant radiator in between can operate at the same resonant frequency and consequently the best isolation performance is achieved. The geometrical parameters of the proposed antenna system are given in Table 1.

Table 1: Dimensions of proposed antennas (mm)

Parameter L Value 30 W 46 d 3 Lpifa Wpifa Hpifa Lcf 22.2 6 7 15 Hs 2 r 2

Parameter Wcf Hcf Ht Ws Value 5 3.3 1 1.25

Experiment and results: The simulated and measured (with Advantest R3765C network analyser) S-parameters for our two-PIFA system are shown in Fig. 2, where it can be seen that the measured and simulated results agree well with each other. The impedance bandwidth (S11 , 210 dB) is 3.52% (with respect to the central frequency), which sufciently covers the WLAN band (2.4 2.48 GHz). A mutual coupling (i.e., S21) lower than 220 dB is achieved across the band, and the maximum isolation is 237.1 dB at the central frequency.
0 5 10 S-parameters, dB 15 20 25 30 35 S11 measurement S21 measurement S11 simulation S21 simulation 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3.0

r
Wcf Lcf y z x Wpifa

Lpifa

Hcf

screw

feed short wall ground plane

feed
y Hpifa z x

40 45 frequency, GHz

Ws Hs

y x

Fig. 2 Measured and simulated S-parameters for proposed antenna

0 330 30 60 300 330 0 30 60

Fig. 1 Schematic diagram for proposed antenna system

300

Antenna conguration and mechanism: The geometry of the proposed antenna system is shown in Fig. 1. The PIFAs and the ground plane are made of a copper sheet with a thickness of 0.4 mm. The distance between the two PIFAs is only 3 mm (about 0.024 wavelength). Each PIFA is connected with the ground plane by a shorted wall and fed by a 50 V SMA coaxial probe. At the end of each feeding probe a large copper sheet is loaded for impedance matching, as utilised in [5]. The operating frequency of a PIFA with a full shorting wall can approximately be determined by (see Fig. 1) c fr 4Lpifa Hpifa 1

270

10 20 30 40 30 20 10

90

270

10 20 30 40 30 2010

90

240 210 180 150

120

240 210 180 150

120

Fig. 3 Measured radiation patterns of proposed antenna structure at 2.45 GHz

a xz plane b yz plane

where fr is the resonant frequency and c is the velocity of light in free space. To increase the fabrication tolerance a tunable device is introduced and has been analysed in [6]. A resonant radiator is formed by the neighbouring edges of the two PIFAs. This resonant radiator can suppress the direct coupling caused from the displacement current

Fig. 3 shows the measured radiation patterns of our antenna system measured in an anechoic chamber. As the two PIFAs are symmetrical, only the radiation pattern of the left PIFA in Fig. 1 is plotted in Fig. 3. During the measurement, when one PIFA is measured (e.g. the

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left one in Fig. 1) the other one is terminated with a standard 50 V matching load. The x z plane pattern is shown in Fig. 3a, where one can see a notch (for both E-theta and E-phi) along the x-axis (u 908) when the left PIFA in Fig. 1 is excited, and a similar pattern is observed when the other (the right) PIFA in Fig. 1 is excited. Such a notch is very helpful for minimising the correlation between the two PIFAs, and thus makes our proposed structure more suitable for diversity/MIMO applications. The measured gain and efciency shown in Fig. 4 is above 2.56 dBi and 60.7% across the WLAN band with peak values of 3.48 dBi and 75.02% at 2.45 GHz, which are sufcient for wireless communications. The decreased efciency is mainly owing to the metallic loss and additional loss of the SMA connectors and cables during the prototype fabrication and measurement.
100 90 80 70 efficiency, % 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 frequency, GHz 2.7 efficiency gain 10 8 6 4 gain, dBi 2 0 2 4 6 8 10 2.8

efciencies of the ith and jth antennas, respectively. The upper bound of the envelope correlation coefcient of the proposed antenna calculated from the measured S-parameter and efciencies is 0.11. This is a very low value and sufcient for diversity or MIMO applications. Conclusions: A MIMO antenna system of two closely-positioned PIFAs with high isolation is presented. With a resonant radiator formed by the neighbouring edges of the two PIFAs, the mutual coupling of the two PIFAs is substantially suppressed and an isolation better than 237.1 dB is achieved while maintaining the inter-PIFA spacing (edge to edge) at less than 0.024 wavelength. The mechanism has been explained. The S-parameters, radiation patterns, efciencies and gains have been measured. The envelope correlation coefcient has also been calculated. All the measurement results and calculations show that our proposed antenna system of high isolation is very suitable for diversity or MIMO applications. # The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2009 14 May 2009 doi: 10.1049/el.2009.1349 S. Zhang, J. Xiong and S. He (Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, Peoples Republic of China) E-mail: sailing@ieee.org S. He: Also with Division of Electromagnetic Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering, S-100 44 Sweden, Stockholm References
1 Murch, R.D., and Letaief, K.B.: Antenna systems for broadband wireless access, IEEE Commun. Mag., 2002, 40, pp. 76 83 2 Chiu, C.-Y., Cheng, C.-H., Murch, R.D., and Rowell, C.R.: Reduction of mutual coupling between closely-packed antenna elements, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 2007, 55, pp. 1732 1738 3 Mak, A.C.K.C., Rowell, R., and Murch, R.D.: Isolation enhancement between two closely packed antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 2008, 56, pp. 3411 3419 4 Chebihi, A., luxey, C., Diallo, A., Thuc, P.H., and Staraj, R.: A novel isolation technique for UMTS mobile phones, IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett., 2008, 7, pp. 665668 5 Rowell, C.R., and Murch, R.D.: A capacitively loaded PIFA for compact mobile telephone handsets, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 1997, 45, pp. 837 842 6 Chiu, C.-Y., Shum, K.M., and Chan, C.H.: A tunable via-patch loaded PIFA with size reduction, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 2007, 55, pp. 6571 7 Hallbjorner, P.: The signicance of radiation efciencies when using S-parameters to calculate the received signal correlation from two antennas, IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett., 2005, 4, pp. 9799

Fig. 4 Measured gain and efciency of proposed two-PIFA structure

The envelope correlation coefcient can also be calculated with the measured S-parameters. For practical antennas, the efciency of antennas is not ideal and the upper bound of the envelope correlation coefcient can be estimated by [7]

reij max jrij j2 max

jrij jmax       Sij Sij Sji Sjj   q   2 2 2 2  1 jSii j jSji j 1 jSjj j jSij j hi hj  v ! u  u 1 1 1 1 t hi hj

where reijmax and jrijjmax are the upper bound of the signal correlation coefcient and the envelope correlation coefcient between the ith and jth antenna, respectively, and hi and hj are the total radiation

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