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Reduction of the Envelope Correlation Coefcient With Improved Total Efciency for Mobile LTE MIMO Antenna Arrays: Mutual Scattering Mode
Shuai Zhang, Andrs Alayn Glazunov, Senior Member, IEEE, Zhinong Ying, Senior Member, IEEE, and Sailing He, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractA mutual scattering mode is introduced in this paper. Utilizing this mode, the correlation of a lossy long-term evolution (LTE) multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna array can be reduced efciently, even down to zero, by increasing the Q factors of the MIMO antenna elements. In practice, the Q factors can be straight forwardly tuned through different input impedance matching. The zero correlation occurs at a Q factor higher than that resulting from the conjugate input impedance matching. On one hand, if the inter-element distance is larger than a certain distance (what we denominate as the Critical Distance), the total efciency can also be improved in addition to reducing the correlation. On the other hand, when the inter-element distance is less than the critical distance, a reference MIMO antenna with high correlation and high total efciency is obtained. This antenna can well be proposed for over-the-air (OTA) measurement applications. The introduced scattering mode is investigated for dual monopoles on a large lossy ground plane and for various mobile terminal MIMO antenna designs. A wideband MIMO antenna, with multiple resonances, covering the band 746870 MHz is proposed with the envelope correlation coefcient and total efciency less than 0.5 and higher than 50% ( 3 dB), respectively. Measurements and simulations agree well for all the fabricated prototypes. The envelope correlations and the multiplexing efciencies of the prototypes are also investigated in propagation channels with Gaussian distributed angle of arrivals. Index Termscorrelation, mobile antennas, multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) system, Q factor.

I. INTRODUCTION N current and future wireless telecommunications systems, such as the long-term evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced, the multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems are an integral part of mobile terminals. In the LTE standards, several new channels are allocated to the lower bands of 700960 MHz.
Manuscript received August 25, 2012; revised November 30, 2012; accepted January 16, 2013. Date of publication February 22, 2013; date of current version May 29, 2013. This work was supported in part by a scholarship within the EU Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window TANDEM and in part by the Swedish VR grant of the Swedish VR grant (# 621-2011-4620). S. Zhang and S. He are with the Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China, and also with the Department of Electromagnetic Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden (e-mail: sailing@ieee.org). A. A. Glazunov is with the Department of Electromagnetic Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. Z. Ying is with Research and Technology, Corporate Technology Ofce, Sony Mobile Communications AB, SE-221 88 Lund, Sweden. Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2013.2248071

The effectiveness of (MIMO) systems in increasing channel capacity without the need of more spectrum or power has been well known for many years [1][3]. In order to guarantee a good multiplexing MIMO performance, the elements in the MIMO antenna array should have a low correlation and a high total efciency. In general, these requirements are quite challenging to achieve, due to the limited space in mobile phones and other small terminals. However, in the higher bands (normally above 1.7 GHz), low correlation and good efciency in small MIMO terminals can be realized efciently by reducing the mutual coupling, i.e., the parameter, between the antenna elements, [4][11]. That is not the case in the lower bands. This poses new engineering challenges on the practical realization of mobile terminals with good MIMO performance in these bands. Unlike the higher bands, the wavelengths at the lower frequencies are much longer and this will result in four main problems: 1) each MIMO antenna element has to be redesigned to obtain a compact structure of the device; 2) the decorrelating structures have to be small enough and still work well; 3) the MIMO elements and the decorrelating structures are more closely positioned, causing high correlation and low efciencies; 4) the chassis mode will be efciently excited, which makes the radiation pattern of each MIMO element quite similar leading to a very high correlation [23]. Moreover, an envelope correlation coefcient (ECC) less than 0.5 and a total efciency higher than 40% are rules of thumb for designing cellular LTE MIMO antennas in the lower bands according to industrial research reports including eld trials and mock ups [12]. Recently, many studies have been reported attempting different solutions to the problems stated above. For example, the neutralization line method presented in [5] proposes canceling the coupling eld by providing another eld by the line. Since this method has a less stringent requirement for the size of the decoupling element, it has become one of the most promising ways for dealing with coupling at the LTE lower bands. However, this neutralization line mode is more difcult to excite at the lower frequencies (700960 MHz) than at the higher frequencies and can only be used in some specic cases. The single band LTE MIMO antenna in [13] is one of the examples, where two branches have to be added to excite the neutralization line mode. Another promising way is the use of decoupling networks as given in [11], [14], [15], and [22]. It does not require any physical decoupling structure between two MIMO antenna elements, but only a decoupling network at the end of each port. However, the result presented in [11] is based on the lossless

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MIMO antenna system assumption. In practice, the losses will not only change the total efciency but also the correlation coefcient [17]. It has been also reported in [11] that the conjugate input impedance matching (uncoupled matching network) facilitates low antenna correlation for any antenna separation. However, large efciency degradation may occur due to the strong mutual coupling. The coupled matching network in [14], [22] and the multiport conjugate (MC) matching in [11] can improve the correlation and efciency, yet at the expense of bandwidth reduction. Additionally, nowadays, most studies dealing with MIMO antenna performance at the lower LTE bands utilize the S-Parameters method (or more specically the mutual coupling evaluated with the help of the parameter) to compute the envelope correlation coefcient, [16]and [25]. However, the S-parameter method for correlation computation presented in [16] is limited to the lossless antennas case and the 3-D uniform angular distribution of the angle-of-arrival (AoA) of the waves impinging at the antennas. The differences between correlations obtained with the methods described in [16] and [17] are already quite considerable for radiation efciencies less than 1 dB (i.e., the common values for the mobile MIMO antennas operating in LTE lower bands, [18]). Therefore, this paper will use the 3-D E-eld radiation patterns as dened in [17] to calculate all the envelope correlation coefcients instead of S parameters. In this paper, we introduce a simple method to reduce the envelope correlation coefcient with improved total efciency and large bandwidth for LTE MIMO mobile terminals. The losses have been taken into account in all the analyses. Generally, the correlation of a MIMO antenna system is determined by the antenna element types and inter-element distance. Here we will illustrate that the antenna Q factor is another important parameter highly affecting the correlation. Indeed, by increasing the Q factor, each antenna element will become a scatterer to the other antenna elements. Consequently, the radiation patterns will be separated automatically achieving a low (even zero) correlation without adding any decorrelating structure into the MIMO system. This result is valid for both the high and the low radiation efciency cases. Due to the losses, the Q factors for zero correlation are usually higher than those from the best (conjugate) input impedance matching in [11]. However, in order to optimize MIMO performance and bandwidth at the same time, the zero correlation may not be required and the Q factors can be lower than those from the conjugate input impedance matching. Then, the improved Q factors can be straightforwardly realized through the better input impedance matching ( parameters). In our approach, the and parameters are treated as factors that affect the total efciency, but not the correlation coefcient. Moreover, we dene a new parameter: the Critical Distance at which the relative contribution of in improving the total efciency will be equal to that of in reducing the total efciency. We show that when the inter-element distance exceeds the Critical Distance, a better impedance matching can both reduce the correlation and improve the total efciency. In this case, we just need to make the input impedance matching as wideband and good as possible to improve the bandwidth and multiplexing MIMO performance regardless the mutual

Fig. 1. Dual monopoles on a large ground plane. TABLE I CAPACITANCE AND LENGTH FOR DIFFERENT MATCHING LEVELS WITH THE MONOPOLE INTER-ELEMENT DISTANCE OF 50 mm

is shown in Fig. 1

coupling . In the following analysis we will show how the Critical Distance can be realized in the mobile handset and propose a wideband mobile LTE MIMO antenna. II. DUAL MONOPOLES ON A LARGE GROUND PLANE WITH HIGH LOSSES In order to explain the mechanism behind the introduced method in general terms, we consider rst the case of two folded monopoles on a large ground plane as shown in Fig. 1. The chosen central operating frequency is 740 MHz and the ground plane is set to 600 mm 600 mm to eliminate the chassis mode effects. Two different inter-element distances are considered: mm and mm. The electrical conductivity of the copper used for the ground plane and monopole has been set to 100 S/m (high loss condition). The central operating frequency and input impedance matching levels of monopoles can be tuned through the length (see Fig. 1) and a capacitor (with resistive loss of 0.1 ) in series with the discrete port. For all the matching levels and inter-element distances, the volume (the smallest half radian sphere) of each monopole is kept the same. The Q factors in this paper are calculated according to [24, Eq. 96]. The resistance and reactance of the input impedance required in [24, Eq. 96] is obtained from [11, Eq. 10], where the load on the non-operating port is set to 50 . A. Dual Monopoles With Inter-Element Distance and High-Loss Copper (100 S/m) mm

Let us set the distance between the two monopoles to 50 mm, i.e., a distance less than 0.125 wavelength of the central frequency. The capacitance and length in Fig. 1 are chosen according to Table I corresponding to ve different matching levels. The Q factors for the considered matching levels are shown in Fig. 2; and as we can clearly see, the Q factor increases as we go from Matching 1 to Matching 5. The corresponding S

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Fig. 2. Q factors for different impedance matching levels of dual monopoles with an inter-element distance of 50 mm.

Fig. 5. Radiation efciency (RE) and total efciency (TE) for dual monopoles with an inter-element distance of 50 mm.

Fig. 3. S Parameters for different impedance matching levels of dual monopoles with an inter-element distance of 50 mm.

Fig. 6. Radiation patterns (realized gain): (a) Antenna 1 (Port 1) in Matching 5; (b) Antenna 2 (Port 2) in Matching 5; (c) Antenna 1 in Matching 1; and (d) Antenna 2 in Matching 1.

Fig. 4. Envelope correlation coefcients (ECC) with 3-D uniform angular distribution for dual monopoles with an inter-element distance of 50 mm

parameters are shown in Fig. 3. Here, as we go from Matching 1 to Matching 4, the becomes better matched, yet with narrower bandwidth than the former due to the increasing Q factors. Matching 4 and 5 have the best matching levels and the highest Q factors around the resonant frequency in all cases. With this behavior in mind, a quite interesting phenomenon can be observed in Fig. 4. Indeed, the envelope correlation coefcient decreases as the Q factors become larger and for Matching 5 it becomes practically zero. This shows that the Q factor is the parameter that is really affecting the correlation coefcient in

our case, but not the input impedance matching level as mentioned in [11]. The radiation efciencies and the total efciencies for different matching levels are presented in Fig. 5. It is worthwhile mentioning that, throughout the paper, all the computed or measured values of the total efciency (TE) include the radiation efciency, the mismatch and the mutual coupling. Several observations can be made from Fig. 5. First, all the computed radiation efciencies are close to 1.5 dB as expected for small terminal MIMO antennas operating at the LTE 700 MHz band. Second, the total efciencies of Matching 2 to 5 (higher than 3 dB) are better than that of Matching 1. The radiation patterns corresponding to Matching 5 (with the highest Q factor) and Matching 1 (with the lowest Q factor) are shown in Fig. 6. The radiation patterns for Matching 5 are much more directional (due to the mutual scattering) than those for Matching 1, which can explain the low correlation in the highest Q factor case (see Figs. 2 and 4). To evaluate the effects of resistive losses on the envelope correlation coefcient, we now introduce a resistor at the end of each monopole in series with the capacitor and discrete port. The

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Fig. 7. Effects of resistive losses on envelope correlation coefcients. TABLE II CAPACITANCE AND LENGTH FOR DIFFERENT MATCHING LEVELS WITH A MONOPOLE INTER-ELEMENT DISTANCE OF 20 mm

Fig. 9. S Parameters for different impedance matching levels of dual monopoles with an inter-element distance of 20 mm.

, and represent the capacitor and the length , respectively.

Fig. 10. Envelope correlation coefcients with 3-D uniform angular distribution for dual monopoles with an inter-element distance of 20 mm.

Fig. 8. Q factors for different impedance matching levels of dual monopoles with an inter-element distance of 20 mm.

capacitance and the length used here are the same as those in Matching 3 (see Table I). As can be seen from Fig. 7, the correlation becomes higher as the resistance (i.e., the loss) increases. This is because high losses lead to low Q factors, which, in turn, can cause the weak scattering effects. B. Dual Monopoles With Inter-Element Distance and High Loss Copper (100 S/m) mm
Fig. 11. Comparison of radiation efciency (RE) and total efciency (TE) for dual monopoles with an inter-element distance of 20 mm.

We now reduce the inter-element distance to mm with unchanged ground plane geometry and materials. Table II shows the length and capacitance that are chosen to keep the central frequency at 740 MHz and achieve different matching levels. In Fig. 8, the Q factors are shown to increase as we go from Matching 1 to Matching 3. The corresponding S parameters and envelope correlation coefcients for different matching levels are presented in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10, respectively. Similarly to the former case (i.e., mm), the correlation decreases with the Q factor, but not as signicantly as in the former case due to the much smaller inter-element distance. Fig. 11 shows how the total efciencies become smaller as the matching (and

the Q factor too) become better. We can therefore conclude that in this case the inter-element distance mm is less than the Critical Distance. Hence, in order to improve the total efciency in addition to achieving low correlation, the proposed correlation reduction method should be used for inter-element antenna distances larger than the Critical Distance. Based on the results above we conclude that he inter-element distance mm in the dual monopoles on a large ground plane case is larger than what we call the Critical Distance. We will show in Section III that this Critical Distance is not determined by the physical distance but by the current distribution.

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TABLE III FEEDING GAP AND INDUCTANCE FOR DIFFERENT MATCHING LEVELS OF COLLOCATED DUAL PIFAS

and represent the coupling gap (see Fig. 12) and the inductance, respectively.

Fig. 12. Geometries of collocated dual PIFAs for MIMO applications. (unit: mm).

Moreover, when the inter-element distance is less than the Critical Distance a higher Q factor will produce a lower correlation but a lower total efciency as well. In other words, if we reduce the Q factor in this case, the correlation and the efciency will increase simultaneously. We can apply this property to produce a reference MIMO antenna for MIMO over-the-air (OTA) measurement, which has a high correlation and high efciency. For example, two straight monopoles with an inter-element distance of 15 mm and lengths of 80 mm can be chosen to be mounted on a copper ground plane with a conductivity of S/m and a size of 600 mm 600 mm. A 10-nH inductor is in series with the discrete port. In this case, the envelope correlation coefcient can be up to 0.925 with a total efciency of over 3 dB (50%) at 740 MHz, which is quite effective and useful in the OTA measurement. III. DUAL-PIFA MIMO ANTENNAS ON MOBILE CHASSIS In the previous section, we showed that the correlation of dual monopoles on a large ground plane decreases by increasing the Q factor of each monopole. This result is independent of the distance between the monopoles. In this section, we will apply this method to mobile handsets and investigate the Critical Distance on the mobile chassis. Both collocated (same end of the chassis, see Fig. 12) and separately-located (opposed ends of the chassis, see Fig. 25) dual PIFAs congurations are investigated next. A. Collocated Dual PIFAs for MIMO Applications The conguration of collocated dual PIFAs is shown in Fig. 12. Two PIFAs are located at the same end of the chassis with a ground plane of 105 mm 60 mm and a 0.8-mm-thick FR4 PCB board with the loss tangent of 0.025. The distance between the two PIFAs is 10 mm. Each PIFA is fed by the capacitive coupling method (C-fed method). Through changing the coupling gap between the metal strip and PIFA, different matching levels of PIFAs can be achieved. On the grounding point of each PIFA, an inductor with a resistive loss equal to 0.2 is added to tune the central frequency to 740 MHz. In order to make the PIFAs radiate efciently, vertical metal walls with heights of 6 mm are soldered on the arms of the PIFAs. Table III shows the values of the coupling gap and inductance for each of the four impedance matching levels considered.

Fig. 13. Q Factors for different impedance matching levels of dual PIFAs.

Fig. 14. S parameters for different impedance matching levels of dual PIFAs.

The Q factors and S parameters for different matching levels are given in Figs. 13 and 14, respectively. As can be seen, the Q factor increases as we go from Matching 1 to Matching 5; Matching 4 is the best among all matching. As opposed to the monopole cases, the mutual coupling does not become stronger as the Q factor increases. Fig. 15 shows that the envelope correlation coefcient becomes smaller for the larger Q factor, as we expected. The radiation patterns of Matching 1 and Matching 5 at 740 MHz are illustrated in Fig. 16. With a higher Q factor the MIMO antenna elements scatter the radiation patterns of each other more efciently. This is because a high Q factor can make each element very sensitive to the near eld environment and enlarge the differences in the radiation patterns of MIMO antenna elements. The current distributions of Matching 5 and Matching 1 are shown in Fig. 17(a) and (b), respectively, when Port 1 is operating (see Fig. 10) with Port 2 connected to a 50 cable. The currents on the chassis of Matching 5 are more

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Fig. 15. Envelope correlation coefcients with 3-D uniform angular distribution for dual PIFAs.

Fig. 18. Radiation efciency (RE) and total efciency (TE) for different impedance matching levels of dual PIFAs in mobile MIMO applications.

Fig. 16. Radiation patterns (realized gain) of dual PIFAs: (a) Antenna 1 (Port 1) in Matching 5; (b) Antenna 2 (Port 2) in Matching 5; (c) Antenna 1 in Matching 1; and (d) Antenna 2 in Matching 1.

Fig. 17. Currents distributions for: (a) Matching 5 and (b) Matching 1, when Antenna 1 (Port1) operates with Port 2 terminated.

asymmetrically distributed as compared to those of Matching 1 (see the current distribution within the red circle), which can lead to more distinct patterns of MIMO antenna elements. In addition, the currents on the ground plane look very weak; however, when the antennas operate at frequencies below 1 GHz the ground plane contributes most of the radiated powers due to its large current area [23].

Next, we investigate the Critical Distance in the collocated dual-PIFA case. Fig. 18 shows the radiation efciencies and the total efciencies for different Matching levels. We can observe that as the Matching is improved from 7 dB (Matching 1) to 20 dB (Matching 3), the total efciency has been enhanced by more than 0.5 dB in addition to the reduction of correlation. Matching levels from 7 dB to 20 dB are within the common range for mobile terminal antennas that have multiple resonances in the lower bands. The efciencies of Matching 4 and 5 are less than those of Matching 2 and 3 due to the larger inductance, but still better than Matching 1. Therefore, it can be concluded that in the collocated dual PIFAs case, the MIMO inter-element distance of 10 mm is still larger than the Critical Distance, even though this distance is much smaller than that in the dual monopoles case with mm. This is because, for a PIFA, the current at the opening end is much stronger compared with that at the shorting end. Hence, when the opening ends of two PIFAs are facing different directions, their currents can also be separated. As we mentioned above, the Critical Distance is determined by the current distribution (not by the physical distance), so the collocated dual PIFAs with 10 mm can still realize a distance larger than the Critical Distance. In order to study the improvement of MIMO system performance as a function of the Q factor, the multiplexing efciency (ME) or is considered next according to [20]. The MIMO multiplexing efciency is evaluated for a propagation channel with Gaussian distribution of the AoA given by (9) in [20]. The mean incidence direction is denoted by and (as opposed to the isotropic channel, the likelihood of impinging waves is not the same in all directions but has a maximum at AoA and ). It is assumed that the angular spread is the same in both elevation and azimuth and approximately equal 30 . We have further restricted our analysis to channels with balanced polarizations, i.e., with cross-polarization ratio . For reference, we have taken two ideal cross-polarized antennas, which give zero correlation. Following the above conditions, the multiplexing efciency is a function of the mean incidence direction:

(1)

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Fig. 19. Multiplexing efciency (ME) for different impedance matching levels of dual PIFAs in mobile MIMO applications.

746870 MHz (i.e., 15.35% fractional bandwidth) with an ECC lower than 0.5 and a total efciency higher than 3 dB. In addition, in Fig. 21(c), one may note that with the same matching level of around 15 dB, the radiation efciency at 775 MHz is around 1.2 dB, which is a little higher than that at 740 MHz (around 1.7 dB) shown in Fig. 8. There are two main reasons to this: 1) the large distance between feeding a shorting pin in the wideband design improves the radiation efciency by 0.2 dB; 2) the use of the lumped capacitor elements to replace the metal feeding strip in the Fig. 12 improves the radiation efciency by 0.30.4 dB. This is because the electric energy in the high Q capacitor (with a resistive loss of 0.1 ) suffers from fewer losses than that in the FR 4 substrate (with a loss tangent of 0.025). B. Dual PIFAs on the Two Ends of Mobile Chassis for MIMO Applications Here we now investigate dual PIFAs on the two opposite ends of the mobile chassis. The geometries of dual PIFAs are shown in Fig. 25. The materials are the same as in the collocated case considered above. Also here, three kinds of matching levels are selected with detailed parameters given in Table IV. The Q factors, the S parameters and the envelope correlation coefcients are shown in Fig. 22, Fig. 23 and Fig. 24, respectively. The mutual coupling is now much stronger than in the collocated case, but as the matching (or Q factor) improves, the correlation is reduced. Fig. 26 shows that the efciency becomes lower as the matching becomes better. This is because, although the physical inter-element distance of the MIMO elements is very large as compared to the collocated case, it is still smaller than the Critical Distance due to the very strong chassis mode.

Fig. 20. Conguration of the proposed wideband MIMO antenna array.

IV. MEASUREMENT RESULTS In order to verify the proposed method, four collocated dual PIFAs with different matching levels were fabricated as shown in Fig. 27. During the fabrication we found that the actual capacitances in the C-fed method realized from the metal strip with gap (see Fig. 12) were around 0.5 pF smaller than the simulated results. It is difcult for Matching 1 and 2 to increase the capacitance values through further reducing the gap . Therefore, for Matching 1 and 2 we utilize a high Q lumped capacitor (with a resistive loss of 0.1 ) directly in series with the feeding line to replace the coupling metal strip. The detailed capacitance values/coupling gaps and inductance are provided in Table V. During all the measurements, a balun was employed at the operating port to mitigate the leakage currents on the cable with the other port terminated with a 50 load. Due to the presence of the feeding cables and balun, the input impedance is hard to measure accurately for the purpose of computing the Q factor. This is because the input impedance measured at the end of the feeding cable and balun has the same amplitude but different phase compared with the actual input impedance of each MIMO element. Furthermore, since the cables have already been soldered to the ground plane and the baluns are not ideal, it is difcult to measure the exact phase delay. However, according to [24, Eq. 87], the Q factor can also be estimated from the matched VSWR fractional bandwidth. The measured S parameters for

where and are the mean effective gains of each antenna port [21], and is the complex envelope correlation of the received signal. With the assumption of high SNR and isotropic environment (i.e., equal likelihood of impinging waves from any direction), and the formula (1) can be simplied to that in [19]: (2) where and are the total efciencies of the MIMO antenna elements. Fig. 19 then shows the MEs evaluated with (2) as a function of frequency for different matching levels. As we can see, increasing the Q factor can improve the ME by almost 2.5 dB at 740 MHz. As an example of the wideband application of the method described above, a wideband LTE MIMO antenna is shown in Fig. 20. As we can see, the MIMO array volume is kept the same as the one in Fig. 12. However, one additional branch for each PIFA has been introduced to generate an extra resonance at the lower frequencies. The resistive losses of capacitors and inductors are 0.1 and 0.2 , respectively. Fig. 21 shows the S Parameters, ECC and Efciency. As can be seen, the proposed MIMO antenna covers the band

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Fig. 21. (a) S Parameters, (b) ECC with 3-D uniform angular distribution, and (c) Efciency of the proposed wideband MIMO antenna.

TABLE IV COUPLING GAP AND INDUCTOR VALUE FOR DIFFERENT MATCHING LEVELS OF DUAL PIFAS ON THE TWO ENDS OF CHASSIS

and represent the coupling gap and the inductor value, respectively (see Fig. 25).

Fig. 24. Envelope correlation coefcient with 3-D uniform angular distribution for dual PIFAs on the two ends of the mobile chassis.

Fig. 22. Q factors for dual PIFAs on the two ends of the mobile chassis.

Fig. 25. Geometries of dual PIFAs on the two ends of mobile chassis.

Fig. 23. S Parameters for dual PIFAs on the two ends of the mobile chassis.

the four fabricated prototypes are shown in Fig. 28. The bandwidth measured at the 6 dB level in parameters (or 3 in VSWR) decreases from Matching 1 to Matching 4, so an increasing Q factor is expected.

Fig. 29 shows the envelope correlation coefcients computed based on measured 3D E-eld patterns. The radiation patterns were measured in a Satimo Chamber shown in the left lower corner in Fig. 27. As can be seen from Fig. 29, the correlation decreases by increasing the Q factor (indirectly inferred from Fig. 28), which is in good agreement with simulations presented above. The radiation gain patterns of Matching 1 and Matching 4 on the -plane (see Fig. 21) are shown in Fig. 30. Clearly, the radiation patterns of the ports in Matching 4 have been separated much more compared with those in Matching 1, which explains the lower correlation for Matching 4 shown in Fig. 29. The total efciency of the prototypes has also been measured and is presented in Fig. 31. As can be seen, the total efciencies of Matching 2, 3, and 4 are better than Matching 1

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Fig. 26. Radiation efciency (RE) and total efciency (TE) for different impedance matching levels of dual PIFAs on the two ends of the mobile chassis.

Fig. 28. Measured S Parameters of fabricated dual PIFAs with different matching levels.

Fig. 29. Measured envelope correlation coefcients of fabricated dual PIFAs with different matching levels.

Fig. 27. Fabricated collocated dual PIFAs and measurement setups. TABLE V COUPLING GAPS (OR CAPACITANCE VALUES) AND INDUCTANCE VALUES FOR DIFFERENT MATCHING LEVELS OF THE COLLOCATED DUAL PIFAS

, and represent the capacitance value/coupling gap and the inductance value, respectively (see Fig. 12). Fig. 30. Radiation gain patterns on the (b) Matching 2. plane for (a) Matching 1 and

at 740 MHz. Moreover, the measured efciency of all the prototypes is around 0.5 dB lower than the simulations, due to fabrication imperfections. However, compared with the simulations in Fig. 18, the decrease of the measured total efciency of Matching 3 and 4 are a little larger than those of Matching 1 and 2. This is because the coupling metal strips in the prototypes of Matching 1 and 2 are replaced by the lumped capacitors. As we mentioned above, this high Q lumped capacitors will introduce fewer losses than the metal strips, while in the simulations the coupling metal strips are applied for Matching 1 and 2. The ME was computed according to (2), i.e., under the isotropic channel assumption, based on the measured total

efciency and correlation coefcients. Results are summarized for different matching levels in Fig. 32. As we can see, measurements also show that the ME has been improved by almost 2.5 dB at 740 MHz. In order to further evaluate the expected in-channel performance of the prototypes, we have also computed their ME according to (1), i.e., under the non-isotropic channel assumption. Fig. 33 shows numerical results for different values of and covering the whole sphere showing a strong dependence of the MIMO multiplexing efciency on the spatial distribution of the eld impinging at the antennas.

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TABLE VI MULTIPLEXING EFFICIENCY OF THE PROTOTYPES IN TWO SPECIFIC CASES

Fig. 31. Measured efciencies of fabricated dual PIFAs.

Fig. 34. Envelope correlation coefcient in the propagation channel with Gaussian distribution of AoA. A1, A2, A3 and A4 stand for Matching 1, Matching 2, Matching 3 and Matching 4, respectively.

From Figs. 33 and 34, we nd that the MIMO antenna performance in non uniform AoA can also be improved with the matching optimized in uniform AoA. V. CONCLUSION
Fig. 32. Multiplexing efciencies of fabricated dual PIFAs through the measured total efciencies and envelope correlation coefcients.

Fig. 33. Multiplexing efciency in the propagation channel with Gaussian distribution of AoA.A1, A2, A3, and A4 stand for Matching 1, Matching 2, Matching 3, and Matching 4, respectively.

As expected, the performance of Matching 1 (A1 in Fig. 33) is worse as compared to the other prototypes. Moreover, the in-channel performance of Matching 4 (A4 in Fig. 33) is expected to be rather similar to Matching 3 (A3 in Fig. 33) and, in most cases both are better than Matching 2 (A2 in Fig. 33). To further illustrate this fact we show results for two specic cases , , and , in Table VI. Fig. 34 shows the envelope correlation coefcients in the propagation channel with Gaussian distribution of AoA. The ECC of Matching 3 (A3) and Matching 4 (A4) are always low for different and .

A generally available mutual scattering mode has been introduced in this paper. This mode can be excited through increasing the Q factors of MIMO antenna elements. In practice, for a given array, the only two requirements for low correlation and improved efciency are a high Q factor (matching) and an element distance larger than the Critical Distance. This method has the following advantages: 1) Easy to realize: input impedance matching techniques (including impedance matching network and optimizing antenna structure) have been successfully utilized in industry for many years. 2) No specic requirement for geometry of each MIMO antenna element: i.e., they do not need to be the same and may have arbitrary structures. 3) Not only valid for the single band, but also for wide band and multiple bands: In the lower bands the antennas can have multiple resonances. A wide band and low correlation MIMO antenna can be proposed with improved efciency. 4) Easy to use together with other known decoupling methods: our proposed method only requires a high Q factor or good matching to achieve decorrelation. 5) Possible to use for MIMO antennas with more than two elements: however, due to the larger coupling between elements the Critical Distance will become larger compared to the dual-element MIMO antennas. Therefore, if the design purposes are reducing correlation as well as improving efciency, the inter-element distances should be larger than that in the dual-element case. 6) The conclusions from this paper are also valid for the on-ground MIMO antennas, i.e., on-ground MIMO PIFAs.

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The present method has been investigated for both the collocated and two-end located cases for mobile terminal applications. A wideband mobile LTE MIMO antenna is proposed. The prototypes have been fabricated and measurements have been carried out. All the measured results have agreed well with the simulations and indicated an improvement of MIMO performance through our introduced mode. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is to address a mechanism for the correlation reduction with the improved total efciency. Besides the mutual scattering mode, the correlations will also be affected by the user [26]. The detailed studies are presented in [27] about how the user affects the correlation and total efciency. In addition to the correlations, one should note that other factors such as branch power ratio, power absorbed and overall mean effective gain will also have effects on the perceived channel capacity and system diversity [26]. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Sony Mobile Communications AB and Ericsson Research for providing the measurement equipment used for this paper. REFERENCES
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[13] H. Bae, F. J. Harackiewicz, M. Park, T. Kim, N. Kim, D. Kim, and B. Lee, Compact mobile handset MIMO antenna for LTE700 applications, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 52, no. 11, pp. 24192422, Nov. 2010. [14] B. K. Lau and J. B. Andersen, Simple and efcient decoupling of compact arrays with parasitic scatterers, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 60, no. 2, pp. 464472, Feb. 2012. [15] K. Karlsson and J. Carlsson, Analysis and optimization of MIMO capacity by using circuit simulation and embedded element patterns from full-wave simulation, presented at the Proc. iWAT 10, Lisban, Portugal, Mar. 2010. [16] S. Blanch, J. Romeu, and I. Corbella, Exact representation of antenna system diversity performance from input parameter description, IET Elect. Lett., vol. 39, no. 9, pp. 705707, Aug. 2003. [17] R. G. Vaughan and J. B. Andersen, Antenna diversity in mobile communications, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 149172, Nov. 1987. [18] P. Hallbjorner, The signicance of radiation efciencies when using S-parameters to calculate the received signal correlation from two antennas, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 4, pp. 9799, 2005. [19] R. Tian, B. K. Lau, and Z. Ying, Multiplexing efciency of MIMO antennas, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 183186, 2011. [20] R. Tian, B. K. Lau, and Z. Ying, Multiplexing efciency of MIMO antennas in arbitrary propagation scenarios, in Proc. Eur. Conf. Antennas Propag. (EuCAP), Prague, Czech Republic, Mar. 2630, 2012, pp. 373377. [21] A. A. Glazunov, A. F. Molisch, and F. Tufvesson, Mean effective gain of antennas in a wireless channel, IET Microw., Antennas Propag., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 214227, Mar. 2009. [22] M. A. Jensen and B. K. Lau, Uncoupled matching for active and passive impedances of coupled arrays in MIMO systems, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 10, pp. 33363343, Oct. 2010. [23] P. Vainikainen, J. Ollikainen, O. Kiveks, and I. Kelander, Resonator-based analysis of the combination of mobile handset antenna and chassis, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 50, no. 10, pp. 14331444, Oct. 2002. [24] A. D. Yaghjian and S. R. Best, Impedance, bandwidth, and Q of antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 12981324, Apr. 2005. [25] S. Stein, On cross coupling in multiple-beam antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-10, no. 5, pp. 548557, Sep. 1962. [26] B. Yanakiev, J. dum Nielsen, M. Christensen, and G. F. Pedersen, On small terminal antenna correlation and impact on MIMO channel capacity, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 60, no. 2, pp. 689699, Feb. 2012. [27] S. Zhang, K. Zhao, Z. Ying, and S. He, Adaptive quad-element multiwideband antenna array for user-effective LTE MIMO mobile terminals, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., to be published.

Shuai Zhang was born in Liaoning, China, in 1983. He received the B.E. degree from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China, in 2007 and the Ph.D. degree in electromagnetic engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, in February of 2013. Currently, he is a Research Fellow in the Department of Electromagnetic Theory, KTH. In 2010, he obtained an Erasmus Mundus scholarship for his Ph.D. studies in KTH. From September 2010 to June 2011, he was a Guest Researcher at the Department of Electrical and Information Technology, Lund University, Sweden. From June 2011 to March 2012, he was a Visiting Researcher in the Corporate Technology Ofce, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communication AB, Sweden. His research interests include ultrawideband (UWB) antennas, MIMO antenna systems, body-centric communications, mm-wave antennas, RFID antennas, and multiple antennas-user interactions.

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Andrs Alayn Glazunov (SM11) was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1969. He received the M.Sc. (Engineer-Researcher) degree in physical engineering from Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Lund University, Lund, Sweden, from 1988 to 1994 and 2006 to 2009, respectively. From 1996 to 2001, he was a member of the Research Staff at Ericsson Research, Ericsson AB, Kista, Sweden, where he conducted research in the areas of advanced receiver performance evaluation for UMTS, applied electromagnetic wave propagation and stochastic channel modeling for wireless communications systems. During this period, he also contributed to the European COST Action 259 project in the directional channel modelling working group. In 2001, he joined Telia Research, Sweden, as a Senior Research Engineer. Later, starting in 2003, he held a position as a Senior Specialist in Antenna Systems and Propagation at the newly formed Telia Sonera Sweden, where he pursued research in smart antennas and MIMO, network optimization and over-the-air (OTA) performance evaluation of handsets and their impact on wireless network performance. From 2001 to 2005, he was the Swedish delegate to the European COST Action 273 and was active in the handset antenna working group. He has been one of the pioneers in establishing OTA measurement techniques. He has contributed to the EVEREST and NEWCOM European research projects as well as to the 3GPP and the ITU standardization bodies. From 2009 to 2010, he held a Marie Curie Senior Research Fellowship at the Centre for Wireless Network Design (CWiND), University of Bedfordshire, UK. Currently, he is a post-doc in the Department of Electromagnetic Engineering, KTH-The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He is the author of various scientic and technical publications. He is the coauthor and coeditor of LTE-Advanced and Next Generation Wireless Networks (Wiley 2012). His current research interests include, but are not limited to, statistical signal processing, electromagnetic theory, fundamental limitations on antenna-channel interactions, RF propagation channel measurements, modeling and simulations for network optimization, and OTA testing of wireless devices.

Zhinong Ying (SM05) is an expert of antenna technology in Network Research Lab. Technology ofce, Sony Mobile Communication AB, Lund, Sweden. He joined Ericsson AB in 1995. He became Senior Specialist in 1997 and Expert in 2003 in his engineer career at Ericsson. His main research interests are small antennas, broad and multi-band antenna, multi-channel antenna (MIMO) system, near- eld and human body effects and measurement techniques. He has authored and coauthored over 80 papers in various of journal, conference and industry publications. He holds more than 70 patents and pending in the antenna and mobile terminal areas. He contributed a book chapter to the well known Mobile Antenna Handbook 3rd edition (Artech House, 2008). He had invented and designed various types of multi-band antennas and compact MIMO antennas for the mobile industry. One of his contributions in 1990s is the development of nonuniform helical antenna. The innovative designs are widely used in mobile terminal industry. His patented designs have reached a commercial penetration of more than several hundreds million products in worldwide. He received the Best Invention Award at Ericsson Mobile in 1996 and Key Performer Award at Sony Ericsson in 2002. He was nominated for President Award at Sony Ericsson in 2004 for his innovative contributions. He has been a Guest Professor in Zhejiang University, China, since 2002. Dr. Ying served as TPC Co-Chairmen in International Symposium on Antenna Technology (iWAT), 2007, and served as session organizer of several international conferences including IEEE APS, and a reviewer for several academic journals. He was a member of scientic board of ACE program (Antenna Centre of Excellent in European 6th frame) from 2004 to 2007.

Sailing He (M92SM98F13) received the Licentiate of Technology and the Ph.D. degree in electromagnetic theory from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, in 1991 and 1992, respectively. Since then he has worked at the same division of the Royal Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor, an Associate Professor, and a Full Professor. He is also with Zhejiang University (ZJU, China) as a distinguished professor of a special program organized by the central government of China, as well as a joint research center between KTH and ZJU. His current research interests include electromagnetic metamaterials, optoelectronics, microwave photonics, and biomedical applications. He has rst-authored one monograph (Oxford University Press) and authored/coauthored about 400 papers in refereed international journals. He has given many invited/plenary talks in international conferences, and has served in the leadership for many international conferences. Prof. He is a Fellow of Optical Society of America (OSA) and The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE).