IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO.
8, AUGUST 2013
Adaptive Quad-Element Multi-Wideband Antenna
Array for User-Effective LTE MIMO Mobile
Terminals
Shuai Zhang, Kun Zhao, Zhinong Ying, Senior Member, IEEE, and Sailing He, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—An LTE MIMO antenna array, which is adaptive to
the effects of the user’s body, is presented for mobile terminals.
The bands of 750–960 MHz and 1700–2700 MHz are covered
with a good efficiency in free space. Three kinds of user effects
are studied, namely, “SAM head and PDA hand,” “PDA hand,”
and “dual hands.” The array is formed by selecting the best two
elements out of four, with the two ports and grounding points of
the other two elements open. The user effects on MIMO channel
capacity are reduced through the adaptive selection of two op-
timal antenna elements. The total efficiency, envelope correlation
coefficient, and multiplexing efficiency are presented for the three
kinds of user effects. In the lower band, the decreased correlation
due to the optimal selection improves the multiplexing efficiency.
The underlying physical mechanisms and some general rules are
discussed. The specific absorption rate (SAR) in the “SAM head
and PDA hand” case is studied. Experiments for the three kinds
of user effects are also carried out.
Index Terms—Adaptive arrays, handset antennas, MIMO, spe-
cific absorption rate, user effects.
I. INTRODUCTION
L ONG-TERM EVOLUTION (LTE) multiple-input and
multiple-output (MIMO) systems have drawn a great
amount of attention, due to their effectiveness in increasing
channel capacity without requiring more spectrum efficiency
and power. In an environment with strong fading, a multiple
antenna system can usually be used as MIMO mode or diversity
mode according to the SNR level [1]. In a high SNR environ-
ment, the MIMO mode will be selected and the highest data rate
can be achieved [2]. MIMO channel performance should be
studied. If the SNR is low, a diversity mode will be utilized and
diversity performance will be evaluated through mean effective
gain (MEG), correlation coefficient, and diversity gains (DG).
In order to achieve a high MIMO channel performance, an LTE
MIMO system requires that envelope correlation coefficients
between antenna elements should be low and the efficiency
Manuscript received November 25, 2011; revised February 20, 2013; ac-
cepted April 09, 2013. Date of publication April 30, 2013; date of current ver-
sion July 31, 2013. The work was supported in part by a scholarship within the
EU Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window TANDEM.
S. Zhang and S. He are with the Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic
Research, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China and also with the
School of Electrical Engineering, KTH-Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100
44 Stockholm, Sweden (e-mail: sailing@ieee.org).
K. Zhao is with the School of Electrical Engineering, KTH-Royal Institute of
Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
Z. Ying is with Research and Technology, Corporate Technology Office, Sony
Mobile Communications AB, SE-221 88 Lund, Sweden.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2013.2260714
0018-926X/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
4275
of each element has to be as high as possible [3], as also
well-known for diversity in e.g. [4]. However, in practice we
need to solve the following two challenging problems in order
to achieve these properties.
The first is the conflict between the limited space of mobile
devices and the technical requirements for the handset MIMO
antennas (multiple wideband, low correlation and good effi-
ciency). In recent years, several papers have reported specific
designs that get round these problems. In [5] a compact MIMO
antenna array with dual-band and dual-isolation properties can
be found operating at WLAN and WiMAX bands. Single-band
and dual-band MIMO arrays for the 700 MHz LTE band are in-
vestigated in [6] and [7], respectively. However, the designs in
[6] and [7] can only provide a low efficiency and quite narrow
bandwidth, which cannot satisfy the needs for some mobile ter-
minal applications. In [8] the isolated antennas are introduced to
design a MIMO antenna with a very high total efficiency (e.g.,
better than 2 dB) at lower frequencies. However, this good iso-
lation is only realized for the MIMO array with one wideband
element and one very narrow-band element. In [9], an asym-
metrical dual-element antenna array with a big ground plane
and wideband property has been introduced. However, due to
the very strong mutual coupling in the lower band, the total effi-
ciency becomes quite low. In addition, the asymmetrical struc-
ture in [9] might also result in different MIMO performances
depending whether the user utilizes the right or left hand.
Another problem is the interaction between mobile terminals
and users, which will reduce the total efficiency of handset an-
tennas by shifting the resonant frequencies and absorbing some
of the radiated/received power. The user’s hand and head effects
on mobile terminal antennas have been studied in [10]–[12].
The user-hand effects on mobile terminal antennas operating in
lower UHF band can be found in [13]. Unfortunately, the re-
searches in [10]–[13] only focus on the user effects on a single
antenna. A dual-element MIMO antenna array with hand effects
has been studied in [14] for the diversity performance at 2 GHz
in mobile terminals. Other research about actual diversity per-
formance of a multiband diversity antenna with hand and head
effects can be found in [15]. However, the diversity mobile an-
tenna elements utilized in [15] are simply located at the each end
of the chassis. The cases of two closely-spaced antennas at the
same end have not been studied. Furthermore, until now the user
effects on the MIMO channel performance of LTE MIMO an-
tennas have not been well investigated for the multi-wide bands
of 750–960 MHz and 1700–2700 MHz.
In this paper a quad-element multi-wideband antenna array
is proposed for LTE MIMO mobile terminals. Utilizing an
4276 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed quad-element LTE MIMO antenna array.
adaptive concept, the MIMO channel performance can be
enhanced for three kinds of user effects, namely, specific
anthropomorphic mannequin (SAM) head and personal digital
assistants (PDA) hand (talk mode), PDA hand (data mode), and
dual hands (read mode). Some general rules and physical mech-
anism explanations for the user effects will also be provided,
which are not restricted only to our proposed antenna array.
II. THE PROPOSED ADAPTIVE QUAD-ELEMENT
MULTI-WIDEBAND ANTENNA ARRAY FOR
LTE MIMO MOBILE TERMINALS
A. Configurations of the Adaptive LTE MIMO Antenna Array
The configuration of the proposed LTE MIMO antenna array
is shown in Fig. 1. The size of each antenna element is only
. Each element consists of two parts:
The first part is printed on the FR4 PCB substrate with the thick-
ness of 0.8 mm and a permittivity of 4.4; the other part is a ver-
tical folded branch structure. Some detailed descriptions for the
LTE MIMO antenna can be found in [16] and some other re-
lated single LTE wideband antennas can be found in [17], [18].
A 1.5 mm- thick plastic mobile phone-cover with a total volume
of is used outside the antenna array
(there are some extra gaps of 1 mm in length and width dimen-
sions). The choice for such a thick cover (1.5 mm) and extra
gap (1 mm) is only to make the manual fabrication easier. If
we reduce the cover thickness from 1.5 mm to 0.5 mm with the
1 mm extra gap unchanged, the increase of body loss is less than
0.4 dB. The display screen will be placed on the other side of
the front chassis in Fig. 1.
In practical applications, according to different user effects
the best two elements out of four will be selected to form a
dual-element LTE MIMO antenna array with the ports and
grounding points (see Fig. 1) of the other two elements open.
The reasons for the open condition are as follows: When only
the grounding points are open, the efficiencies of the operating
elements will be reduced due to the coupling currents and
50 ohm terminations on the non-operating ports. If only the
antenna ports are open, the long grounding strips will become
parasitic elements whose geometries are not optimized for the
Fig. 2. Comparison between the case with the ports and grounding points of
Antenna 3 and Antenna 4 open, and the case without Antenna 3 and Antenna 4
when Antenna 1 and Antenna 2 are operating.
operating elements. Consequently, the impedance bandwidths
of the selected elements will be highly affected and cannot
cover the whole bands of 750–960 MHz and 1700–2700 MHz.
In addition, the grounding strips will also introduce some extra
losses and change the chassis mode. Therefore, the ports and
grounding points of the non-selected elements should stay
open simultaneously. In practice, this open condition for each
element can be achieved by two single-pole double-through
(SPDT) switches with a total typical insertion loss (for two
switches) of 0.6 dB in the lower band, and 0.8 dB in the
higher band. If this kind of SPDT switches is based on
micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) the total insertion
loss can be reduced to less than 0.3 dB in the lower band and
less than 0.4 dB in the higher band. In order to describe the
dual-element combinations, Antenna ij will be used to denote
the operating Antennas i and j with the grounding points and
ports of the other two elements open.
In addition, with the open condition mentioned above the op-
erating dual-element array will have very similar performances
(including the user effects) as the array without the non-oper-
ating elements in the system. When Antenna 1 and Antenna 2
are operating, Fig. 2 shows the comparison between the case
with the ports and grounding points of Antenna 3 and Antenna
4 open, and the case without Antenna 3 and Antenna 4 but with
a ground plane length of 108 mm (7 mm longer than that in
Fig. 1, due to the chassis mode effect). The S parameters are al-
most the same. The comparison of Smith charts is presented in
Fig. 3, to show the impedance behavior of the two above-men-
tioned MIMO antenna arrays in free space.
B. Performance of the Adaptive LTE MIMO Antenna Array
The S parameters, total efficiency and envelope correlation
coefficients of the different dual-element combinations in the
ZHANG et al.: ADAPTIVE QUAD-ELEMENT MULTI-WIDEBAND ANTENNA ARRAY FOR USER-EFFECTIVE LTE MIMO MOBILE TERMINALS
Fig. 3. Comparison of Smith charts between the case of Antenna 3 and Antenna
4 open, and the case without Antenna 3 and Antenna 4 when Antenna 1 and
Antenna 2 are operating.
Fig. 4. S parameters of the different dual-element combinations in the adaptive
quad-element LTE MIMO antenna array.
adaptive quad-element LTE MIMO antenna array are presented
in Fig. 4, Fig. 5(a) and (b), respectively. It can be observed
that each combination can cover the bands of 750–960 and
1700–2700 MHz with a good efficiency in free space. In addi-
tion, all the envelope correlation coefficients in this paper are
calculated through the 3D E-field radiation patterns, as show in
Formula (2).
In [3], a parameter known as multiplexing efficiency has been
introduced in order to estimate the MIMO channel performance
simply through the efficiency and envelope correlation coeffi-
cient of the MIMO antenna elements. This formula is based on
the assumption of high SNR and isotropic environment, and can
be found as follows:
4277
(1)
where and are the total efficiency of the first and second
MIMO antenna elements, respectively. is the envelope corre-
lation coefficient between the two elements. In the LTE MIMO
system the body loss (BL) of 95% throughput and BL of multi-
plexing efficiency at certain frequency are comparable (almost
the same) based on the measured results [19].
The multiplexing efficiency of the different dual-element
combinations in free space can be found in Fig. 5(c). In the
lower band the MIMO performance of Antennas 12 is better
than those of the other dual-element combinations. This is
because the chassis mode is very strong if the MIMO antenna
elements are placed at different ends of the mobile terminal,
which will increase the mutual coupling (reduce the total
efficiency) and the envelope correlation coefficient. However,
when the user effects are introduced, in some situations the
antenna elements at each end of the chassis can also provide
a better multiplexing efficiency by dramatically reducing the
correlation between the elements.
III. USER EFFECTS STUDY AND REDUCTION THROUGH THE
PROPOSED ADAPTIVE QUAD-ELEMENT MULTI-WIDEBAND
ANTENNA ARRAY
In this section three kinds of user effects (“SAM head and
PDA hand,” PDA hand, and dual hands) will be studied and re-
duced through the proposed adaptive quad-element multi-wide-
band antenna array. Some general rules and physical mecha-
nism explanations for the user effects will be presented in the
lower-band and higher-band, and these are not restricted only
to our proposed quad-element LTE MIMO antenna array.
The positions of the whole LTE MIMO antenna array and
the user’s body (“SAM head and PDA hand,” PDA hand) are in
accordance with the CTIA revision 3.1 [20]. For the case of dual
hands, since there is no standard yet, the whole antenna array
and dual hands are arranged in a common handsets-holding way.
The dielectric properties of the human tissue used in this paper
can be found in [20].
Since the structure of our designed array is symmetrical,
using the left or right hand will not cause any difference. In
the simulation, we assume that the user uses the right hand (as
most people do). All the simulations in this paper are carried
out by the commercial software CST [21]. Since CST does
not support the function of rotating fingers, the figures within
the cover area (see Fig. 6) have been totally subtracted. This
method is quite commonly used in industrial simulations and
will affect very little the final results.
A. User Effects-Talk Mode (SAM Head and PDA Hand)
The tissue model and antenna elements locations in talk mode
(SAM head and PDA hand) case are shown in Fig. 6(a). The
display screen is facing the SAM head.
The total efficiency of each port in different dual-element ar-
rays is shown in Fig. 7(a). The ranking of the total efficiencies
in lower band is: port 3, port 4, port 2 and port 1; in higher band
the ranking is port 3, port 1, port 2 and port 4. Port 3 always has
the best total efficiency. Thus if the environment is not optimal
4278 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013

Fig. 5. (a) Total efficiency, (b) Envelope correlation coefficients and (c) Multiplexing efficiency, of the different dual-element combinations in the adaptive quad-
element LTE MIMO antenna array.

Fig. 6. Model and antenna elements locations of: (a) SAM head and PDA hand (talk mode), (b) PDA hand (data mode), and (c) dual hand (read mode).

Fig. 7. (a) Total efficiency, (b) Envelope correlation coefficient and (c) Multiplexing efficiency, of the SAM head and PDA hand (talk mode).

for the MIMO performance and only one port will be utilized,
port 3 (or port 4 for left hand) may be a good choice.
The envelope correlation coefficient is shown in Fig. 7(b),
where some interesting results are found: the correlation of An-
tenna 34 in lower band is much lower than those of the other
combinations. Efficiency reduction is not the main reason, be-
cause Antenna 12 has nearly the largest total efficiency loss in
lower frequencies (see Fig. 7(a)) but the correlation decreases
only a little. The Antenna 34 case has two characteristics: large
human body coverage of the whole dual-element antenna array
and the user’s hand is placed approximately symmetrically be-
tween two ports.
Utilizing formula (1), the multiplexing efficiencies of dif-
ferent dual-element combinations are calculated and presented
in Fig. 7(c). As expected, due to the high efficiency and low cor-
relation in lower band, Antenna 34 has a better multiplexing effi-
ciency than the other combinations of antennas. In higher band,
since the correlations for different combinations are quite sim-
ilar, Antenna 13, with the highest efficiency in the higher band,
gives the best multiplexing efficiency. However, since the used
antenna structure is an off-ground type, if the specific absorp-
tion rate (SAR) is considered, Antenna 34 will have the lowest
SAR value compared with the other combinations. Therefore,
from the aspects of the MIMO channel performance and SAR
values, Antenna 34 can be used in the whole band for the talk
mode.
The SAR value of Antenna 34 has been investigated ac-
cording to the CTIA standards [20] (SAM head and cheek
ZHANG et al.: ADAPTIVE QUAD-ELEMENT MULTI-WIDEBAND ANTENNA ARRAY FOR USER-EFFECTIVE LTE MIMO MOBILE TERMINALS 4279

TABLE I
SAR VALUE OF ANTENNA 34

Fig. 8. SAR value investigation: (a) CITA head, (b) Original antenna array
location in the phone cover, (c) Antenna array location in the phone cover with
reduced SAR.

touch) as shown in Fig. 8(a). The American Federal Communi-

cation Commission (FCC) standard requires 1.6 W/kg average
1 g tissues, while the European standard requires 2 W/kg
average 10 g tissues. The maximum emission power for LTE
system is 24 dBm (0.25 W) regardless of the used frequency.
Therefore, the input power is 0.25 W for both the lower band
and higher band. All the SAR calculations include the effects of
the S parameters (mutual coupling and mismatching). The SAR
values of Antenna 34 are calculated and shown in Table I. With
the original location, Antenna 3 and Antenna 4 always have low
SAR values in lower band for the FCC and European standards.
However, in higher bands (1700–2700 MHz), the SAR of
Antenna 4 is quite high, especially for the FCC standard. The
high value is mainly due to the high maximum emission power
for LTE system and the small distance between the feeding
Antenna 12 are severely mismatched at 900 MHz, due to the
point and SAM head. If we change the whole LTE MIMO
hand effects causing a shift of the lowest resonance out of the
antenna array from the original position in Fig. 8(b) into that in
lower band.
Fig. 8(c) (and also place the display on the front chassis side),
The envelope correlation coefficient is shown in Fig. 9(b).
the SAR values of both Antenna 3 and Antenna 4 are reduced
The correlation of Antenna 34 has the lowest correlation and
very significantly, as shown in Table I. This change will have
its characteristics are the same as the SAM head and PDA hand
little effect on the total efficiencies and envelope correlation
case. The multiplexing efficiency is also given in Fig. 9(c). It can
coefficients in the three cases (SAM head and PDA hand, PDA
hand, and dual hands). Therefore, in the following study we be observed that in the lower band, due to the lower correlation,
will still use the original antenna array position (placing the Antenna 34 (which has the most coverage) is a little better than
display on the back side of chassis) for analysis. In addition, Antenna 12, but not significantly because of the high loss at port
some other LTE MIMO SAR studies can be found in [22], [23]. 4. Therefore, for the data mode, in the lower band Antenna 12
or Antenna 34 can be used, and in the higher band Antenna 12
will be utilized.
B. User Effects- PDA Hand (Data Mode)
In Fig. 6(b), the tissue model and antenna elements locations C. User Effects- Dual Hand (Read Mode)
are presented for the PDA hand (data mode) case. According to The dual hand model is shown in Fig. 6(c), and the total ef-
the CTIA standard in [20], the hand model and holding rules are ficiency is shown in Fig. 10(a). In lower frequencies, the dif-
exactly the same as in the SAM head and PDA hand case. ferences in the total efficiency between different dual-element
The total efficiencies for the different combinations are combinations are quite small due to the chassis mode, while in
shown in Fig. 9(a). Except for the efficiency of port 4, the the higher band port 2 and port 3 with less user hand coverage
efficiency difference between all the ports is not as significant gives higher efficiency. The envelope correlation in Fig. 10(b)
as that in the “SAM head and PDA hand” case. In other words, shows that Antenna 14, with the largest hand coverage and sym-
the SAM head causes larger effects (including the frequency metrically placed hand, has the lowest value. In the dual hand
shifting and body loss) to port 1 and port 2 positions than to the case, due to the similar efficiency in lower band the correlation
other two port positions. In the data mode, port 4 is the worst is the dominant factor for the high multiplexing efficiency, and
position in terms of the efficiency. Additionally, in Fig. 9(a) thus Antenna 14 gives the best multiplexing efficiency, as illus-
one can observe that at 900 MHz the total efficiency of Antenna trated in Fig. 10(c). In the higher band, because of the similar
12 is somehow smaller than the efficiency of Antenna 34. This correlation, the efficiency becomes very important and conse-
is because compared with Antenna 34 both two elements of quently Antenna 23 has a higher multiplexing efficiency than
4280
Fig. 9.(a) Total efficiency, (b) Envelope correlation coefficient and (c) Multiplexing efficiency, of the PDA hand (data mode).
Fig. 10. (a) Total efficiency, (b) Envelope correlation coefficient, and (c) Multiplexing efficiency, of the dual hand (read mode).
the others. Therefore, for the read mode, Antenna 14 can be uti-
lized in the lower band, and in the higher band Antenna 23 will
be used.
D. Some Rules and Physical Explanations of User Effects
From the total efficiency, envelope correlation coefficient and
multiplexing efficiency for the three kinds of user effects, some
general rules and physical explanations can be given as follows
(not restricted only to our proposed MIMO antenna array):
1) In the talk mode, compared to the PDA hand, the SAM
head will bring more efficiency losses for the position of
Antenna 1 and Antenna 2 than the position of Antenna 3
and Antenna 4.
2) The total efficiency variations between different combina-
tions in the lower band (750–960 MHz) are relatively small
compared with those in the higher band (1.7–2.7 GHz). In
other words, the lower band efficiency is less sensitive to
the body coverage than the higher band. This is because
in the higher band the array is the only main radiating part,
while in the lower band, besides the dual-element array, the
ground plane is also a main radiating part [24].
3) The envelope correlation coefficient in the lower band can
be reduced effectively if the dual-element combination
has the following two characteristics: large human body
coverage of the whole dual-element antenna array, and the
user hand is placed approximately symmetrically between
the two ports. The reason is as follows: when the dual-ele-
ment array satisfies these two characteristics the user hand
can be viewed as a source of scattering. This scattering
will efficiently separate the radiation patterns of the two
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013
MIMO antenna elements and consequently achieve a low
correlation.
4) In the lower band, the multiplexing efficiency of the
dual-element combination with the largest coverage of the
user’s body can sometimes perform better than the other
combinations. This is some what counterintuitive. Low
body coverage does not always give a good result. In the
higher band, the best performance should belong to the
combination with the least body coverage. The mechanism
behind this phenomenon is as follows: the multiplexing ef-
ficiency is determined by two factors: total efficiency and
the envelope correlation coefficient. In the lower band, the
correlation between two antennas is relatively high. This
is the main reason for the decrease of the MIMO channel
capacity. As mentioned in items 2 and 3, the large body
coverage can reduce the correlation very effectively and
the efficiency will not decrease much. Thus the large body
coverage can sometimes give a better multiplexing effi-
ciency than the others. In the higher band, the correlation
has fallen to a quite low level and the total efficiency is the
factor which mainly affects the multiplexing efficiency.
Reducing the body coverage (the loss of efficiency) can
directly increase the MIMO performance. Additionally, if
the MIMO antenna elements have a quite low envelope
coefficient in the lower band, it can be expected that the
low body coverage will also give a higher multiplexing
efficiency than a high body coverage. However, due to the
limited space in mobile terminals and the strong chassis
mode in the lower band, it is very difficult to make sure all
the dual-element combinations have a low correlation.
ZHANG et al.: ADAPTIVE QUAD-ELEMENT MULTI-WIDEBAND ANTENNA ARRAY FOR USER-EFFECTIVE LTE MIMO MOBILE TERMINALS
Fig. 11. Four different scenarios for MIMO performance evaluation, (a) Free
space (no user effect), (b) SAM head and PDA hand (talk mode), (c) PDA hand
(data mode), (d) Dual hand (read mode).
IV. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
In order to verify the simulation results, some experiments
have been carried out. In Section II-A, it has been analyzed that
when Antenna 12 is operating the performances are quite similar
between the case with the ports and grounding points of Antenna
34 open, and the case without Antenna 34. From our further
studies, we found that the performances of user effects are also
quite similar if the operating dual elements in the above-men-
tioned two cases have the same antenna element positions for
the three different kinds of user effects. In order to simplify the
manual fabrication, a dual-element LTE MIMO array in the An-
tenna 12 position (see Fig. 1), with a ground plane length of 108
mm, has been made. During the experiments the fabricated array
is placed exactly in the same positions of Antenna 12 or Antenna
34. Four different scenarios for MIMO performance evaluation
are illustrated in Fig. 11(a)–(d).
A. Free Space
Fig. 2 shows the comparisons between the simulated S param-
eters of Antenna 12/34 in the quad-element array and the mea-
sured S parameters of Antenna 12/34 in the fabricated dual-el-
ement array. The results agree well with each other.
In practice, the measured envelope correlation coefficient
can be obtained through two methods. The first one is to measure
the 3D E-field radiation patterns of two antennas and thereafter
put the 3D patterns into the correlation definition formula in [25]
to calculate
(2)
4281
where
, and where denotes the elec-
tric far field of the antenna and is the ratio of the average
vertical power to the time-averaged horizontal power in the
fading environment in a linear form [26], [27]. The second
method is to use a reverberation chamber and directly measure
the correlation between two ports. However, the accuracy
highly depends on the number of samples in the measurement.
Usually, in the lower band at least 4000 samples are needed for
each frequency point. It would take a very long time to carry
out these samples in all the bands. We also use the reference
MIMO antenna to compare the correlations in both ways. It
is found that both methods can give correlation coefficients
very similar to that of the reference antenna, if the number of
samples in the second method is large enough. All the measured
correlation coefficients in this paper are obtained through the
first method, and with a uniform, uncorrelated, and full-sphere
scenario. The simulated and measured efficiency, envelope
correlation coefficient and multiplexing efficiency of Antenna
12/34 are given in Fig. 5(a), (b) and (c), respectively. One
can see that the measured correlation in the band of 850–960
MHz is a little higher than the simulated one, and the measured
efficiency (and multiplexing efficiency) is somewhat lower
than the simulation results. This will introduce some differ-
ences between the simulated and measured total efficiency and
multiplexing efficiency in the three user-effect cases. In order
to remove these effects in the user-effect measurement, we
use normalized multiplexing efficiency (NME) and normalized
total efficiency (NTE) defined as follows:
(3)
(4)
B. User Effects
The measured and simulated envelope correlation coeffi-
cients of Antenna 12 and 34 in the talk mode, data mode and
read mode are shown in Fig. 7(b), 9(b) and 10(b), respectively.
The results in the higher band are almost the same. The small
differences in the lower band are mainly due to the difference
of correlations in free space. As we previously mentioned, the
measured correlations of Antenna 34 in the talk mode and data
mode are quite low due to the scattering of the user’s hand.
The measured normalized total efficiencies of the talk mode
and read mode are illustrated in Fig. 12(a) and (c), respectively.
Fig. 13(a) and (c) show the measured normalized multiplexing
efficiencies of these two modes, respectively. We observe that
the results match the simulations quite well. For the data mode
in Fig. 12(b) and Fig. 13(b), in the lower band the measured
results for Antenna 12 are similar to the simulation results. In
practice Antenna 34 becomes worse due to the larger losses of
port3 and port 4. Thus, in practical applications, Antenna 12
can be selected for the data mode. Furthermore, the losses in
all measurements are somewhat higher than those in the sim-
ulations (as expected), but the relative loss levels between dif-
4282
Fig. 12. Simulated and measured normalized total efficiency of Antenna 12 and Antenna 34 for (a) talk mode, (b) data mode, and (c) read mode.
Fig. 13. Simulated and measured normalized multiplexing efficiency of Antenna 12 and Antenna 34 for (a) talk mode, (b) data mode, and (c) read mode.
ferent ports and array combinations are still similar to those in
the simulations.
Generally speaking, the measurements and the simulations
agree quite well, though sometimes the actual losses are higher
than expected, but still acceptable.
V. CONCLUSIONS
An adaptive quad-element multi-wideband antenna array has
been introduced for user-effective LTE MIMO mobile termi-
nals. With the designed antenna array, three kinds of user ef-
fects on the MIMO channel performance have been investi-
gated, based on the total efficiency, envelope correlation coeffi-
cient and multiplexing efficiency. The user effects have been re-
duced efficiently through the adaptive selection of two optimal
antenna elements. Some general rules and physical mechanisms
have been provided and discussed. All the measured results have
been analyzed. To summarize the simulation and experimental
results, in practical applications, Antenna pair (3, 4) and An-
tenna pair (1, 2) can be utilized for the talk mode (with the con-
sideration of the SAR) and data mode, respectively. For the read
mode case, Antenna pair (1, 4) and Antenna pair (2, 3) can be
used in the lower and higher bands, respectively. Due to the page
limitation, the diversity performance is not studied here. How-
ever, in an isotropic environment, mean effective gain (MEG)
can be simplified and is equal to half of the total efficiency in
value. The diversity gain (DG) can be estimated through the
provided correlation and MEG. Furthermore, in this paper we
have introduced the distributed MIMO concept in the uniform
environment. This concept can be extended to other environ-
ments for the improvement of MIMO channel capacity with user
effects.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Sony Mobile Communica-
tions AB for providing the measurement equipment used for this
paper. The partial support of a Swedish VR grant (2011-4620)
is also gratefully acknowledged.
REFERENCES
[1] L. Zheng and D. Tse, “Diversity and multiplexing: A fundamental
tradeoff in multiple-antenna channels,” IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol.
49, no. 5, pp. 1073–1096, May. 2003.
[2] B. Holter, “On the capacity of the MIMO channel: A tutorial introduc-
tion,” in Proc. IEEE Norwegian Symp. Signal Processing, 2001, pp.
167–172.
[3] R. Tian, B. K. Lau, and Z. Ying, “Multiplexing efficiency of MIMO
antennas,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 183–186,
2011.
[4] W. C. Jake, Microwave Mobile Communications. New York, NY,
USA: Wiley-IEEE Press, 1994.
[5] S. Zhang, B. K. Lau, Y. Tan, Z. Ying, and S. He, “Mutual coupling
reduction of two PIFAs with a T-shape slot impedance transformer for
MIMO mobile terminals,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 60, no.
3, pp. 1521–1531, Mar. 2012.
[6] J. Lee et al., “Miniature Long-Term Evolution (LTE) MIMO ferrite
antenna,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 603–606,
2011.
[7] M. Han and J. Choi, “Small-size printed strip MIMO antenna for next
generation mobile handset applications,” Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett.,
vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 348–352, Feb. 2011.
[8] J. Ilvonen, O. Kivekäs, A. A. H. Azremi, R. Valkonen, J. Holopainen,
and P. Vainikainen, “Isolation improvement method for mobile ter-
minal antennas at lower UHF band,” in Proc. 5th Eur. Conf. Antennas
and Propagation (EUCAP), Rome, Italy, 2011, pp. 1307–1311.
[9] L. Huitema, M. Koubeissi, M. Mouhamadou, E. Arnaud, C. Decroze,
and T. Monediere, “Compact and multiband dielectric resonator
antenna with pattern diversity for multistandard mobile handheld de-
vices,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 11, pp. 4201–4208,
Nov. 2011.
ZHANG et al.: ADAPTIVE QUAD-ELEMENT MULTI-WIDEBAND ANTENNA ARRAY FOR USER-EFFECTIVE LTE MIMO MOBILE TERMINALS
[10] W. Yu, S. Yang, C. L. Tang, and D. Tu, “Accurate simulation of the
radiation performance of a mobile slide phone in a hand-head position,”
IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 168–177, Apr. 2010.
[11] M. Pelosi, O. Franek, M. B. Knudsen, G. F. Pedersen, and J. B. An-
dersen, “Antenna proximity effects for talk and data modes in mobile
phones,” IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 15–26, Jun.
2010.
[12] J. IIvonen, O. Kivekas, J. Holopainen, R. Valkonen, K. Rasilainen, and
P. Vainikainen, “Mobile terminal antenna performance with the user’s
hand: Effect of antenna dimensioning and location,” IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 772–775, 2011.
[13] J. Holopainen, O. Kivekas, J. IIvonen, R. Valkonen, C. Icheln, and P.
Vainikainen, “Effect of the user’s hands on the operation of lower UHF-
band mobile terminal antennas: Focus on digital television receiver,”
IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 831–841, Aug.
2011.
[14] A. A. Azremi, J. Ilvonen, R. Valkonen, J. Holopainen, O. Kivekäs,
C. Icheln, and P. Vainikainen, “Coupling element-based dual-antenna
structures for mobile terminal with hand effects,” Int. J. Wireless Inf.
Netw., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 146–157, 2011.
[15] V. Plicanic, B. K. Lau, A. Derneryd, and Z. Ying, “Actual diversity
performance of a multiband diversity Antenna with hand and head Ef-
fects,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 5, pp. 1547–1556,
May 2009.
[16] S. Zhang, S. He, K. Zhao, and Z. Ying, “Multi-band wireless terminal
with multiple antennas along an end portion of a backplate,” US patent
EP 2575208 A1, Apr. 3, 2013.
[17] Z. Ying, Simple Compact LC Loading Wideband Antenna for LTE and
Other Bands Sony Mobile patent pending and filed by US, Oct. 2010.
[18] Z. Ying, Ground Free Type Compact LC Loading Dual Loop More
Than 10 Bands Antenna for Cellular and Non-Cellular Wireless Ter-
minals Sony Mobile patent pending and filed by US, Mar. 2010.
[19] Z. Zhang and Z. Ying, Downlink Throughput Measurements Report of
Original Mint vs. Gemini Monopole Mint Sony Mobile internal report,
May, 2012.
[20] Test plan for Mobile Station Over the Air Performance CTIA revision
3.1, Jan. 2011.
[21] CST Microwave Studio 2011 by Computer Simulation Technology
[Online]. Available: http://www.cst.com
[22] K. Zhao, S. Zhang, Z. Ying, T. Bolin, and S. He, “SAR study of
different MIMO antenna designs for LTE application in smart mo-
bile handsets,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 61, no. 6, pp.
3270–3279, June 2013.
[23] D. Shi, Y. Gao, and X. Du, “The SAR value analysis of LTE terminals,”
in Proc. Int. Symp. Electromagnetic Compatibility, Rome, Italy, 2012,
pp. 1–4.
[24] P. Vainikainen, J. Ollikainen, O. Kivekäs, and I. Kelander, “Res-
onator- based analysis of the combination of mobile handset antenna
and chassis,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 50, no. 10, pp.
1433–1444, Oct. 2002.
[25] R. G. Vaughan and J. B. Andersen, “Antenna diversity in mobile com-
munications,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 149–172,
Nov. 1987.
[26] R. Clarke, “A statistical theory of mobile radio reception,” Bell Syst.
Tech. J., no. 2, pp. 957–1000, 1996.
[27] Channels, Propagation and Antennas for Mobile Communications, R.
Vaughan and J. B. Andersen, Eds. London, U.K.: Inst. Elect. Eng.,
2003.
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, in 2007 and the Ph.D. degree
in electromagnetic engineering from the Royal
Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden,
in February 2013.
He is currently a Research Associate with Depart-
ment of Electromagnetic Engineering, KTH. He has
been a Visiting Researcher with the Department of
Electrical and Information Technology, Lund Univer-
4283
sity, Lund, Sweden, and Sony Mobile Communication AB, Sweden. His re-
search interests include ultrawideband (UWB) antennas, MIMO antenna sys-
tems, body centric wireless communications, mm-wave antennas, RFID an-
tennas and multiple antennas-user interactions.
Kun Zhao was born in Zhejiang, China, in 1987.
He received the B.S. degree in communication
engineering from Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 2010, and
the M.S. degree in wireless systems from the Royal
Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden,
in 2012, where he is currently working toward the
Ph.D. degree.
He has been a Visiting Researcher at Sony Mobile
Communication AB, Sweden. His current research
interests include MIMO antenna design, multiple an-
tennas-user interactions and body centric wireless communications.
Zhinong Ying (SM’05) is a Principal Engineer
(senior expert) of antenna technology in Network
Research Lab. Research and Technology, Sony Mo-
bile Communication AB within Sony Group, Lund,
Sweden. He joined Ericsson AB in 1995. He became
Senior Specialist in 1997 and Expert in 2003 in his
engineer career at Ericsson, and Principal Engineer
at Sony Group. He has been a Guest Professor at
Zhejiang University, China, since 2002. His main
research interests are small antennas, broad and
multi-band antenna, multi-channel antenna (MIMO)
system, near-field and human body effects and measurement techniques. He
has authored and co-authored over 90 papers in various journal, conference and
industry publications. He holds more than 80 patents and patents pending in the
antenna and mobile terminal areas. He contributed a chapter to the well-known
book Mobile Antenna Systems Handbook, 3rd edition (Artech House, 2008).
He invented and designed various types of multi-band antennas and compact
MIMO antennas for the mobile industry. One of his contributions in the
1990s was the development of a non-uniform helical antenna. The innovative
designs are widely used in the mobile terminal industry. His patented designs
have reached a commercial penetration of more than several hundred million
products worldwide.
He received the Best Invention Award at Ericsson Mobile in 1996 and the
Key Performer Award at Sony Ericsson in 2002. He was nominated for the
President Award at Sony Ericsson in 2004 for his innovative contributions. He
served as TPC Co-Chairmen in International Symposium on Antenna Tech-
nology (iWAT), 2007, and served as session organizer of several international
conferences including IEEE APS, and was a reviewer for several academic jour-
nals. He was a member of the scientific board of the ACE program (Antenna
Centre of Excellent in European 6th frame) from 2004 to 2007.
Sailing He (M’92–SM’98–F’13) 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 Pro-
fessor, an Associate Professor, and a full Professor.
He also serves as Director for a joint research center
between KTH and Zhejiang University (China). His
current research interests include applied electromag-
netics, electromagnetic metamaterials, optoelectronics, microwave photonics
and biomedical applications. He has first-authored one monograph (Oxford
University Press) and authored/co-authored about 500 papers in refereed in-
ternational journals. He has given many invited/plenary talks in international
conferences, and has served in the leadership for many international confer-
ences.