152 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO.

1, JANUARY 2019

Size Reduction of Self-Isolated MIMO Antenna

System for 5G Mobile Phone Applications
Anping Zhao , Senior Member, IEEE, and Zhouyou Ren

Abstract—An antenna element that has not only the self-isolated

property but also a compact size is proposed for the fifth-generation
multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) system in mobile
phone applications. In particular, the size reduction is done by in-
troducing two vertical stubs into the original self-isolated antenna
element. It is demonstrated that very good isolation and antenna
efficiency for an 8-antenna MIMO system can be obtained without
using any additional isolation elements or decoupling techniques.
An antenna prototype is fabricated and measured; and a quite
good agreement between simulation and measurement is obtained.
Index Terms—Compact self-isolated antenna, fifth-generation
(5G) communication, mobile terminal, multiple-input and
multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE fifth-generation (5G) communication technology can
T provide many advantages such as higher transmission rate
and shorter latency over the current 4G system [1], [2]. It has
been demonstrated [3]–[11] that to achieve higher transmis-
sion rate for the 5G operation below 6 GHz, the multiple-input
and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system with a relative
large number of antennas (e.g., 8-antenna or more) should be
adopted. Due to the limited space in mobile phones, however,
how to achieve high isolation for such a big number of antennas
becomes a critical challenge. Until now, some techniques that
can be used to improve the isolation such as the decoupling ele-
ment [12], the orthogonal polarization [13], the defected ground
structure [14]–[16], the neutralization line [17]–[19], and the de-
coupling network [20]–[22], have been reported. However, most
of them were developed for the system consisting of two anten-
nas only, which normally cannot be applied to MIMO antenna
systems that have more than two antennas in a row, e.g., the 5G
8-antenna MIMO application in mobile terminals.
Among the 5G MIMO antenna designs in mobile terminals
[3]–[11], improvements on the antenna isolation were consid-
ered by using the neutralization line [4], the dual-polarized
antenna element [7], the two asymmetrically mirrored anten-
nas [8], and the multimode decoupling technique [9]. However,
good isolation (around 20 dB) within the entire band can be
achieved only with the multimode decoupling technique [9].
Nevertheless, due to the use of the isolation elements, the an-
tenna efficiency was reduced significantly [9].
Very recently, an antenna system based on the self-isolated
antenna element that can provide not only good isolation but
Manuscript received November 2, 2018; accepted November 20, 2018. Date
of publication November 26, 2018; date of current version January 3, 2019.
(Corresponding author: Anping Zhao.)
The authors are with the Shenzhen Sunway Communication Co., Ltd.,
Shenzhen 518502, China (e-mail:, anping.zhao@sz-sunway.com; zhouyou.
ren@sz-sunway.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2018.2883428
Fig. 1. Configuration of the proposed compact self-isolated antenna element.
also a good antenna performance has been reported [23]. The
unique feature of the self-isolated antenna element is that the
antenna element itself works as not only the antenna radiation
element but also the isolation element. However, the size of
the antenna element is quite big. For example, the length of
the antenna element is 24.8 mm (antenna height H = 6.2 mm)
for antenna working at the 3.5 GHz (3.4–3.6 GHz) band [23].
In this letter, it will be demonstrated that the antenna size can
be reduced about 30% by adding two vertical stubs [24] in the
original self-isolated antenna element.
II. WORKING PRINCIPLE OF THE COMPACT SELF-ISOLATED
ANTENNA SYSTEM
The compact self-isolated antenna element is shown in Fig. 1.
This antenna contains a T-shaped feeding element, an inverted
U-shaped radiating element (grounded at its two ends), and
two additional vertical stubs. The antenna height and length are
described by H and L, respectively; the height and length of the
T-shaped element are depicted by h and t; and the location and
the length of the vertical stub are represented by p and q. When
H and L are fixed, the antenna resonance frequency and the
impedance matching can be fine-tuned by varying parameters
h, t, p, and q. While the two vertical stubs are not adopted, the
antenna resonance frequency is mainly determined by the total
length (L + 2H) of the antenna [23].
Fig. 2 illustrates the current distributions of the compact self-
isolated antenna and the traditional self-isolated antenna [23] at
3.5 GHz. These two antennas are optimized or tuned to have very
similar antenna return loss, which can ensure a fair comparison
between them. To achieve the above performance, the values of
L for the traditional antenna and the compact antenna are 25 and
17.4 mm, respectively, when H is fixed at 6 mm. This means that
compared to the traditional antenna design, the antenna length L
can be reduced about 30% when the compact antenna solution is
adopted. The antenna size reduction with such a high percentage

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ZHAO AND REN: SIZE REDUCTION OF SELF-ISOLATED MIMO ANTENNA SYSTEM FOR 5G MOBILE PHONE APPLICATIONS 153

Fig. 2. Current distributions of the two antenna configurations at 3.5 GHz. The
top and bottom represent, respectively, the compact and traditional antennas.

can be explained by studying the current distributions of these

Fig. 3. Perspective and side views of an 8-antenna MIMO system. (a) Per-
two antennas. As shown in Fig. 2, for both the antennas, the spective view. (b) Side view. The width of all the antenna parts is 0.8 mm.
currents at position O are always zero as these two antennas
are with symmetry and work at their monopole-like mode. For
the traditional antenna, the current path (of the left half) is just
ABO; but there are two current paths for the proposed compact
antenna: ABCD and ABCO. Unlike the current at position O, the
current at position D is not zero, and thus, the contribution of the
path ABCD is always bigger than that of the path ABCO. These
two current paths make the effective length of the proposed
antenna longer, which results in a very significant reduction in
the antenna size.
It should be mentioned here that at the top center of the
inverted U-shaped element, a small gap (about 1–2 mm) can
also exist. In this case, the antenna becomes two identical F-
shaped elements. As explained in [23], the gap just gives us one
more freedom to fine-tune the antenna system. The self-isolated
property of the proposed antenna does not change whether the
small gap exists or not. The advantage of the proposed compact Fig. 4. Simulated S-parameter of an 8-antenna MIMO system while d12 =
self-isolated MIMO antenna system will be demonstrated next. d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm.
All the simulation results are obtained with CST Microwave
Studio [25].
L, while L is the length of the antenna unit. The four antennas
are uniformly distributed along the small substrate while d12 =
III. 8-ANTENNA MIMO SYSTEM BASED ON COMPACT
d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm; and in this case D12 = D23 = D34 =
SELF-ISOLATED ANTENNA ELEMENT 38.2 mm. For simplicity, the condition d12 = d34 (D12 = D34)
The perspective and side views of the proposed 8-antenna is kept while d23 (D23) varies; and the values of L and H are
MIMO system are shown in Fig. 3. The 8-antenna MIMO fixed at L = 17.4 mm and H = 6.0 mm throughout this study.
system is located along the two long edges of the mo- Because the 8-antenna MIMO system has certain symmetry,
bile terminal. The dimension of the system substrate is only necessary S-parameter will be considered.
150 mm × 75 mm × 0.8 mm. In addition, two clearance ar- Fig. 4 plots the S-parameter of the 8-antenna MIMO system
eas (75 mm × 8 mm) located separately at the top and bottom with d12 = d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm (i.e., uniformly distributed),
of the system substrate are reserved for the current 4G anten- while the parameters of the compact antenna element are opti-
nas and other antennas. The 8-antenna units are printed on two mized at: t = 5.0 mm, h = 3.5 mm, p = 3.5 mm, and q = 4.7 mm.
small substrates that are placed perpendicularly to the system One can see from Fig. 4 that the curves of S11 and S22 do not
substrate; and each side has four antenna units. The dimension change much, which means that the proposed compact antenna
of the small substrate is 134 mm × 6 mm × 0.8 mm. The system works well in the 3.5 GHz band while it moves from the lo-
substrate and the small substrate are all double-sided FR4 (with cation of Ant1 to the location of Ant2. Although the worse
εr = 4.4 and loss tangent = 0.02). Each antenna is fed with a antenna isolation appears in S32 , it is still better than 19.6 dB.
50 Ω SMA connector through via-hole from the back side of This indicates that a very good isolation can be obtained with
the system substrate. The edge-to-edge distances between Ant1 the proposed compact antenna. The antenna efficiencies of Ant1
and Ant2, Ant2 and Ant3, Ant3 and Ant4 are described by d12, and Ant2 are shown in Fig. 5. Both the antenna radiation and
d23, and d34, respectively, whereas the distances between the total efficiencies are pretty good, and the antenna total efficien-
feeds of the above antenna elements are described by D12, D23, cies are always better than 60% within the 3.5 GHz band. To
and D34. The relation between d and D is, e.g., D23 = d23 + our knowledge, without using any decoupling elements and/or
154 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2019

Fig. 8. Simulated ECC of an 8-antenna MIMO system with d12 = d23 = d34
= 20.8 mm.
Fig. 5. Simulated antenna efficiencies of an 8-antenna MIMO system while
d12 = d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm.

Fig. 6. Simulated current distributions at 3.5 GHz for an 8-antenna MIMO

system while d12 = d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm.

Fig. 9. Simulated CC of an 8-antenna MIMO system with d12 = d23 = d34

= 20.8 mm.

Fig. 7. Simulated antenna radiation patterns at 3.5 GHz for an 8-antenna

MIMO system with d12 = d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm.

techniques, the antenna designs proposed in this letter and the

one developed in [23], are the only two approaches that can
achieve such good antenna isolation and antenna efficiency for
the 8-antenna MIMO system in mobile devices.
The current distributions of the MIMO system at 3.5 GHz
are shown in Fig. 6, in which Ant1 and Ant2 are excited sep-
arately. The radiation patterns of Ant1 and Ant2 are illustrated
in Fig. 7, and the maximum gains of different antennas point in
Fig. 10. Simulated S-parameter of an 8-antenna MIMO system varies as a
different directions. Similar to the antenna system in [23], the function of t, while d12 = d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm.
current flowing along the antenna and the ground plane of the
current system is also confined to the area of the antenna that is
excited, which also explains why the proposed compact MIMO To further demonstrate the working principle of the proposed
antenna system has very good isolation. Fig. 8 shows the cal- MIMO antenna system, some parameter studies are given next.
culated envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) of the proposed Fig. 10 shows how S11 and S21 of the MIMO system are affected
8-antenna system. The ECC values are well below 0.0125 within by parameter t, not only the antenna resonance frequency but
the 3.5 GHz band, which are good enough for the 5G MIMO also the impedance matching are affected. This means that the
operation. The calculated channel capacity (CC) of the MIMO antenna impedance matching can be optimized by the T-shaped
system obtained by averaging over 10 000 Rayleigh fading real- feeding element. The influence of the length (q) of the stub on
ization with a 20 dB signal noise ratio (SNR) [3], [23] is shown S11 and S21 is shown in Fig. 11. Although the length of the stub
in Fig. 9. The CC value within the 3.5 GHz band is better than has strong impact on the resonance frequency, the impact on
34 bps/Hz, whereas for the ideal 8 × 8 MIMO antenna system, the impedance matching is quite weak. Similar phenomenon is
it is about 44 bps/Hz. observed when the position (p) of the stub changes (not shown).
ZHAO AND REN: SIZE REDUCTION OF SELF-ISOLATED MIMO ANTENNA SYSTEM FOR 5G MOBILE PHONE APPLICATIONS
Fig. 11. Simulated S-parameter of an 8-antenna MIMO system varies as a
function of q, while d12 = d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm.
Fig. 12. Simulated S-parameter of an 8-antenna MIMO system while
d23 = 4 mm and d12 = d34 = 29.2 mm for Ant2 is either with or without
reoptimization.
Also, the resonance frequency shifts lower when the values of
q and p get bigger. This is why the antenna size can be reduced
when the vertical stubs are adopted. Moreover, it can be seen in
Figs. 10 and 11 that the antenna isolations are not varied much
when parameters t and q are changed. This can be seen as one
of the advantages of the proposed antenna system.
Note that all the above studies are for the cases when the four
antennas are uniformly distributed along the small substrate.
However, the usefulness will be enhanced if these antennas can
be nonuniformly distributed. To demonstrate how the proposed
antenna system works for this case, as an example, d23 = 4 mm
will be considered. The S-parameters of the 8-antenna MIMO
system with d23 = 4 mm shown in Fig. 12 are for two cases:
with or without reoptimization. The reoptimization case means
that the length (t) of the T-shaped element of Ant2 (and its coun-
terparts, Ant3, Ant6, and Ant7) is reoptimized from 5 to 4.5 mm
while all the other optimized parameters remain unchanged. As
shown in Fig. 12, Ant2 can cover the 3.5 GHz band very well
when it is reoptimized, In addition, the reoptimization does not
have negative impact on isolations and almost no influence on
S11 . The above analysis reveals that the proposed 8-antenna
MIMO system can be reoptimized easily when the locations of
the antennas vary.
The 8-antenna MIMO system with uniform distribution was
fabricated and measured. The photo of the prototype is shown in
Fig. 13. The measured and simulated S-parameters are shown in
Fig. 14, and a good agreement is obtained. The worse measured
155
Fig. 13. Photo of the fabricated antenna prototype of an 8-antenna MIMO
system with d12 = d23 = d34 = 20.8 mm.
Fig. 14. Simulated and measured S-parameter of an 8-antenna MIMO system.
Fig. 15. Simulated and measured antenna total efficiencies of an 8-antenna
MIMO system.
isolation appears in S32 but it is still better than 19.1 dB. As
shown in Fig. 15, the measured antenna total efficiencies also
agree very well with the simulated results; and they are better
than 60% in the entire 3.5 GHz band. The measured results
confirm that the proposed MIMO antenna system has not only
good antenna isolation but also high antenna efficiency.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, an 8-antenna MIMO system is proposed for the
5G mobile applications. The MIMO antenna system is based
on a compact antenna element that has the self-isolated prop-
erty. It was confirmed by both simulation and measurement that
quite good antenna isolation can be achieved without using any
additional isolation elements or decoupling techniques. Most
importantly, as the radiating element of the proposed antenna
acts also as the decoupling element, the antenna total efficiency
is not decreased. Because of the structure compactness and the
self-isolated property, the proposed MIMO antenna system will
be a very good choice for the 5G MIMO application in mobile
devices.
156 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2019
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