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Recent Advancements in User Effect Mitigation for Mobile Terminal Antennas: A

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Recent Advancements in User Effects Mitigation
for Mobile Terminal Antennas: A Review
Rizwan Khan, Student Member, IEEE, Azremi Abdullah Al-Hadi, Senior Member, IEEE
and Ping Jack Soh, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—A dramatic evolution can be observed in cellular
wireless communication. It started from analog 2G (GSM)
towards high data rate systems such as 3G (WCDMA), 3.5G
(HSPA), 4G (LTE and LTE advanced), and currently converging
in a more optimized and compact 5G (OFDMA) form. The main
challenges for designing of mobile terminal antennas are the
compact size requirement of built-in structure, multi-band capa-
bilities and number of integrated antennas that form Multiple-
Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) terminal system. Moreover, they
are required to fulfill all performance and safety standards. For
mobile antennas, their radiation efficiency may be affected by
the interaction of user head/hand, which consequently affects
the correlation of MIMO antenna systems. This paper provides
an overview of user effect on mobile terminal antennas in the
last 7 years. An overview of the Cellular Telecommunication and
Internet Association (CTIA) specifications for mobile terminal
antennas will first be explained. This is followed by a discussion
on the user’s effects on MIMO parameters, channel capacity
on mobile terminal antennas and millimeter wave (mmW) ap-
plications prior to the presentation of recent technologies that
are aimed at improving the antenna performance. Finally, a
perspective and potential future investigations on mobile terminal
antennas will be discussed in the conclusion.
Index Terms—Mobile antennas, multi-element antenna, elec-
tromagnetic radiation effects, mutual coupling, MIMO system,
antenna efficiency, SAR.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE demand for fast transmission and reception of infor-
mation has been the driving force behind the progress
of wireless technology. Wireless communication system has
rapidly evolved since 1958 from the first generation (1G)
analog to the second generation (2G) digital systems, and
towards the third generation (3G) systems which are capa-
ble of multimedia transmission. With the current evolution
towards the fourth generation (4G) systems through e.g.,
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and Long Term Evolution
(LTE) systems, this demand for increase in mobile broadband
communications is foreseen to continue dramatically. The
fifth generation 5G communication will further overcome this
issue of mobile traffic increase by 2020 [1]. In addition to
the cellular mobile phone systems, various wireless mobile
systems have been deployed in various areas. These systems
operates throughout the kilohertz region to as high as gigahertz
Azremi Abdullah Al-Hadi is with the School of Computer and Com-
munication Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), Malaysia,
corresponding author e-mail: (azremi@unimap.edu.my).
Rizwan Khan and Ping Jack Soh are also with the School of Computer and
Communication Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), Malaysia,
e-mail: (jadoon.rizwankhan57@gmail.com), (pjsoh@unimap.edu.my).
1
regions, covering short to intermediate distances, comple-
mented by the nationwide conventional mobile phone systems.
To complement these developments, various advancements in
antenna technologies have also taken place for these mobile
phone systems [2].
In designing the mobile terminal antennas, several crucial
characteristics are desirable such as compactness, multi-band
operation, built-in coexistence with multi radio and MIMO
systems. For instance, smart phones of today are required to be
capable of accessing more than ten 4G and 3.5G frequencies
besides all other 2G and 4G networks for global coverage and
roaming. Two major trends for mobile terminal antenna are as
follows: 1) compact sized antennas for mobile terminal with
multiband operation; and 2) compliance to various standards
and requirements. For example, mobile communication net-
work operators within the Third Generation Partnership Project
(3GPP) introduced the RF Over-the-Air (OTA) requirements
for mobile phones operating in the vicinity of user in order to
improve their network performance.
In addition, issue that needs to be considered in designing of
mobile terminal antenna is the effect of housing and the human
body possibly caused by RF radiation from multi radio and
antennas in mobile phones. The value of specific absorption
rate (SAR) should be as low as possible, especially when
evaluated near to the human head. Significant reduction of
radiation efficiency caused by the users highly affects the
correlations in MIMO antenna systems. Low pattern corre-
lation between antenna elements and low mutual coupling
are required to realize good MIMO or diversity performance.
While the system’s channel capacity can be enhanced using
MIMO technology, the complexity of SAR will be increased
accordingly. Moreover, the complexity of the near field op-
eration is compounded by the increase of the number of
transmitters and antennas within the handset.
This paper discusses the issue of mobile terminal antenna
usage in the vicinity of user. Moreover, technologies which
have been adapted to improve their performance in such
scenario proposed over the past seven years will be critically
reviewed. On the contrary, a previous review on mobile
terminal antennas in [2] is limited to the development of
designs and did not comprehensively address the effect of
users. Specifically, issues related to user effects on mobile
terminals are systematically discussed as follows. The antenna
performance limitations of commercial mobile terminals are
first described, followed by the review of previous investiga-
tions on the user effects and SAR. In addition to that, the
impact of the users hands on MIMO terminal and mmW

Fig. 1: Positioning of AUT with respect to personal digital
assistants (PDA) palm spacer [3].
terminal antenna performance is assessed. Finally, techniques
used to improve the performance of such mobile terminals are
presented and discussed prior to our concluding remarks.
II. P ERFORMANCE C ONSTRAINTS AND A SSESSMENT
P ROCEDURE OF C OMMERCIAL M OBILE T ERMINAL
A NTENNAS
The 3GPP working group has been working defining system
requirements and regulations of a mobile terminal over the
past several years. Different standards are currently being
considered and developed. Cellular Telecommunication and
Internet Association (CTIA), an international organization
representative of the wireless industry has also defined spec-
ifications concerning antennas designs with considerations of
user’s body effects. A working group consisting of mobile
phone manufacturers, operators and test equipment vendors is
developing a detailed test plan as in [3].
While effective wireless operation of a device is highly
dependent on the effective radiated performance, they are
easily degraded due to the compactness requirement. For
instance, designing of a compact and efficient antenna for
multiple frequency operation is extremely challenging [3].
Accurate characterization of radiation performance will
enable carrier and manufacturers to optimize wireless devices
for efficient operation within the constraints of a specific
cellular network. The peak Effective Isotropic Radiated
Power (EIRP) is rarely a complete indication of wireless
performance [3]. For instance, a highly directive antenna
radiation pattern indicates a high peak EIRP due to its high
gain in a particular direction. However, coverage in other
direction is often poor. In a cellular environment, maximizing
the spatial coverage of antenna system often results in
satisfactory call operations. Furthermore the human body
is also capable in altering the radiation performance of the
antenna. Losses due to the human body can significantly vary
with device size, frequency and the type of antenna radiation
due to the choice of topology. From the field performance’s
perspective, assessment of the peak EIRP in the vicinity of
users is more meaningful than in free space. Depending on
the type of assessed device, CTIA recommends the following
configurations during real-time measurements:
1) Free space, the antenna under test (AUT) should be
placed directly on a support made of low dielectric
material.
2
Fig. 2: Different test positions based on CTIA definition: (a)
talking position SAM Phantom only, (b) talking position with
SAM and hand, (c) data mode using both left and right hands,
(d) browsing mode using both left and right hands.
2) Talking mode (in proximity of a head-and-hand phan-
tom): the AUT is required to be placed against a head
phantom or in a hand phantom.
3) Browsing mode (in proximity of a hand phantom only):
the AUT is required to be placed in a hand phantom.
The form factor of smart phones in the recent years is
becoming slimmer, with increase in its length. Due to this,
understanding of the type of antenna alignment with the
user’s hand based on the phone size is crucial in simulations
and measurements. From Fig. 1 it is illustrated that mobile
phones with lengths of less than or equal to 135 mm should
be assessed when aligned on the top and bottom of the
spacer. On the other hand, mobile phones longer than 135
mm are required to be aligned on the bottom and side of the
spacer. When assessing in proximity of the human head, the
perpendicular bisector of the phone should be aligned with the
ear to mouth line of the phantom head. The ear is referenced
to the point where the acoustic part of the phone should be
placed. A 60 tilt outwards from the cheek is also required
when evaluating the phone in these positions [3]. Meanwhile,
several on-body test cases for mobile phone assessments in
passive and active modes have also been proposed by CTIA.
Body-equivalent phantoms such as Specific Anthropomorphic
Mannequin (SAM) are typically used to assess and ensure that
the maximum averaged SAR value over any 1g and 10g tissue
does not exceed 1.6 W/kg and 2 W/kg, respectively [2].
To evaluate the effects of different phone form factors,
the hand phantoms are defined for talking (with hand and
head), data (single hand mode) and browsing modes (dual hand
mode) [4] as illustrated in Fig. 2. These include mono-blocks
(with widths of less than 56 mm), personal digital assistants
(PDA) phone and clamshell phones (with widths of more than
56 mm). The resulting losses are dependent on the antenna
design, size and thickness of the phone and its placement.
Moreover, the antenna performance is affected when the head
or hand is in close proximity to the antenna near field. The per-
formance of the mobile terminal antenna in proximity of user’s
analyzed in these different scenarios always differs due to the
antenna placement on the chassis of mobile phone. Due to the
use of multiple antennas in a mobile phone, the index finger
of a user’s hand caused the severest obstruction. Meanwhile,
in browsing mode, the antenna’s radiation is obstructed by the
thicker hand palm tissue. The challenge in embedding various
features such as short range communication and photography
is also compounded by the interaction of the mobile terminals

Fig. 3: Antenna parameters needed to be considered when AUT is in presence of user and mitigation techniques.
with the human body, possibly resulting in severe degradation.
Fig. 3 summarizes the antenna parameters which need to
be considered when AUT is operated close to the human
body. One of the most comprehensive experimental assessment
was presented in [5], where the performance of six different
antennas (meandered monopole, monopole with L-loading,
C-fed, planar inverted L antenna (PIFA), loop antenna and
Distributed Matching Antenna (DMA)) were assessed using a
commercial mobile phone (Sony Ericsson T650). They were
simulated in four different situations (a) in free space, b) beside
the head, c) beside the head and hand, and d) beside the head in
the browsing mode. It was found that the on-head and on head-
and-hand configurations are highly lossy for the meandered
monopole, PIFA and monopole antennas. High losses are also
observed for the hand-held configuration in the browsing mode
for the loop, monopole and meander line antennas. The most
recent investigation of antenna performance of a number of
recently used smart phones and tablets is presented in [6]. The
measurements for total radiated power (TRP) were performed
using the user’s left and right hand in talk mode for GSM900,
UMTS900, GSM1800 and UMTS2100 for twenty six different
smart phones. Besides that, assessments were also performed
in browsing mode for LTE (800, 1800, 2600) and UMTS (900,
2100) for four different tablets. The worst performing phones
were additionally measured without the phantom hand or head
to evaluate the influence of the human body. For GSM900,
the worst performing phones are Huawei P9 and “iPhone
6S+”, whereas the best performing phones for GSM900 are
HTC Desire 626 and Doro Phone Easy 530x [6]. For the
worst performing phones, the difference between free space
and hand-head results are about 20 dB at the GSM900 band,
whereas the difference is only 8 dB for the best performing
phones. For tablets, the on-body loss for LTE2600 data service
is only about 2 to 5 dB, whereas their performance varied
between 1 dB and 2.6 dB in comparison to free space.
3
III. U SER E FFECTS AND SAR FOR M OBILE T ERMINAL
A NTENNAS
A systematic study of body losses using mobile phones
with different mobile terminal size, different types of antennas
and antenna placement have been performed in [7]. It is
noticed that the body losses are strongly dependent on the
antenna type, location, phone form factor, etc. To calculate
the radiation efficiency degradation of the antenna elements
in vicinity of user’s body, body loss (B) which is defined in
[7] is used:
Bi (dB) = ηfreespace,i (dB) − ηuser,i (dB) (1)
where ηfreespace,i is the radiation efficiency in free space and
ηuser,i , (i = 1,2...), is the radiation efficiency for the user case
of antenna i.
A. Mobile terminal antennas below 1 GHz
In LTE and LTE-A systems, MIMO antennas are an integral
part of the mobile terminals. As several new channels below
1 GHz have been allocated for LTE, it is crucial to review
the different investigations of the effects of user’s head/hand
below 1 GHz in [8-16]. It is observed that the introduction of
the hand in proximity of mobile terminal generally causes a
downward shift in frequency. In addition to that, the maximum
SAR resulting from the use of PIFA antennas was calculated
in the respective operational frequencies [8-10] were found to
be between 0.08 to 1.6 W/kg for 1g tissue.
For MIMO systems, an extensive study of a two-antenna
capacitive coupling element (CCE) with different antenna sizes
and placement in a small mobile terminal was evaluated in
[11]. It is shown that the antenna size strongly affects the
impedance bandwidth, decorrelation bandwidth and MIMO
performance. Meanwhile, the effect on mutual coupling on
two closely-spaced elements was discussed in [12], in which
the effect of index finger is shown. Results indicated a 10

Fig. 4: Radiation pattern of mobile phone antennas (a) 4G, (b)
5G [39].
dB variation in mutual coupling, depending on the position of
index finger. The effects of the antenna size and locations on
radiation performance investigated in [13] indicated a constant
behavior despite changes in the height of the antenna element.
Next, an investigation for bendable devices performed in [14]
proved that the size of ground plane significantly affects the
performance of mobile terminal antenna operating below 1
GHz. Further down the spectrum, the effect of user’s hand
on the operation of a lower UHF-band antenna is presented
in [15], indicated a 7 to 11 dB antenna efficiency decrease
compared to free space. Finally, researchers in [16] proposed
an evaluation method for the head and hand influence on the
radiation characteristic. This method enables the TRP/total
radiated sensitivity (TRS) decline to be conveniently and
efficiently evaluated.
It was observed from [8-16] that the proximity of the human
body generally affects total efficiency more severely in com-
parison to changes of the antenna matching. Moreover, antenna
matching is typically affected via detuning of its impedance
bandwidth downwards. An intuitive and yet effective solution
would be to place the antenna with sufficient spacing, which
may be challenging due to the limitations on the mobile
terminal size.
B. Mobile terminal antennas between 1 GHz and 5 GHz
The effects of users on mobile antennas operational above 1
GHz were studied in [17-20]. SAR of a planar antenna within
the frequency range of 2.6 to 3.1 GHz [17] was found to
exceed the established international standard for 1g by 17.5%.
An investigation on the effect of proximity of the user hand
on compact MIMO arrays are presented in [18, 19]. The study
in [18] investigated three usage scenarios (data mode with left
and right hand, browsing mode) and are evaluated in terms
of total efficiency, fading efficiency and absorption efficiency.
Meanwhile, a compact wideband MIMO antenna with two
novel bent slits is presented with an investigation of its data
mode/talk mode in [19]. The user’s effect on a beam-steerable
mobile terminal antenna at 3.5 GHz is also investigated in
[20], indicating that at least 5 dB losses is expected resulting
from placing a user hand in browsing mode and 3 dB loss is
found in data mode [20].
From this study, it is found that the SAR in a human head
model for the planar antenna in the frequency range of 2.6 to
4
Fig. 5: Predicted skin relative permittivity according to differ-
ent researchers (a) relative permittivity, (b) relative conductiv-
ity [41].
3.1 GHz exceeds the established international standards of 1g.
Meanwhile, the dielectric loading introduced by the hand on
the wideband antennas did not cause very significant changes
in the antennas bandwidths, reflection coefficient and isolation.
C. Mobile terminal antennas between 10 GHz and 15 GHz
Moving further up the frequency range, several investiga-
tions of user effects on mobile terminals have been performed
between the 10 and 15 GHz [21-23]. In [21], a new mea-
surement approach to investigate the hand effect on a 11 GHz
mobile terminal is proposed. Less than 6 dB of total efficiency
and a peak gain of 9 dB is observed when the proposed
antenna is placed on a real human hand. The resulting peak
gain indicated a decrease of less than a 3 dB when placed
in proximity of a hand phantom compared to its peak gain
in free space. Meanwhile, an investigation of the effects of
user’s body at 15 GHz using a phased array is presented in
[22, 23]. It was seen that a much stronger shadowing effect
by the human body caused a more severe reduction on the
coverage efficiency of the phased array.
The effects of the hand on antennas operating between 10 to
15 GHz have to be considered with care due to its sensitivity
in affecting the already constrained link budget. Moreover,
strong shadowing effect due to the human body may lead the
reduction of coverage efficiency within this frequency range
in comparison to lower operating cellular bands.
IV. I MPACT OF U SER ON MIMO P ERFORMANCE
As LTE/LTE-A mobile systems aim to support high speed
data communication, MIMO and antenna diversity techniques
are essential to such terminals. To improve MIMO perfor-
mance in mobile terminals, several additional considerations
such as its gain imbalance, branch power ratio, envelop cor-
relation coefficient (ECC), mutual coupling between antenna
elements, multiplexing efficiency, MIMO channel capacity and
effective diversity gain need to be considered. User’s proximity
will strongly affect these parameters when utilizing multiple
antenna techniques such as diversity and MIMO.
A. MIMO Mobile terminal antennas below 1 GHz
The consideration of the user’s impact in mobile commu-
nication systems strongly influences the choice of their an-
tenna design and their placement within the mobile terminals.

Fig. 6: Recent literature investigating user effects in the mmW
band.
Besides that, utilizing multiple antennas requires proper per-
formance and system reliability assessments, especially when
operating below 1 GHz. For the head, a correlation between
far-field patterns is reported in [24]. This investigation shows
that the far-field patterns on the both sides of the head are
strongly correlated when the head is present within the phone.
However, simulations indicated that the far-field patterns are
uncorrelated when the phone is placed in the coordinate system
of the environment. Another investigation on the performance
of MIMO LTE handset in terms of branch power ratio (BPR)
and ECC was presented in [25]. An index finger simulated
in different positions on the terminal indicated that the losses
due to mismatch and absorption for certain finger placement
varied by more than 5 dB. The MIMO diversity antenna was
also detuned heavily and resulted in a minimum total efficiency
of -19.1 dB, compared to -1.9 dB in free space. In addition
to that, a simultaneous ECC decrease is observed resulting
from the user interference, along with a BPR increase. Another
interesting investigation in [26] reported the user effect on
multiplexing efficiency of MIMO antennas. Up to 4 dB loss
is caused by the human hand at 0.75 GHz, while a 2.4 dB
degradation in multiplexing efficiency is noticed due to the
decorrelation of the hand.
A MIMO antenna system designed with the prior knowledge
and consideration for its antenna efficiency will most likely
yield a satisfactory system performance. The design procedure
must include a simple validation of the user’s influence, with a
minimum targeted threshold of the resulting antenna efficiency.
While enhancing the overall system performance using multi-
antenna techniques is effective, optimizing and compensating
the effect of user’s body requires additional investigation
effort.
B. MIMO Mobile terminal antennas between 1 GHz and 3.5
GHz
Many recent studies on the performance of multi antenna
systems have indicated that different user scenario can affect
the performance of MIMO antenna [27]. Gain imbalance
occurs due to the different levels of power absorbed by users,
which in turn affects the overall system performance. Mean-
5
while, evaluation of distributed MIMO antennas for mobile
phones using a full human model found that the antenna ECC
and radiation performance can be improved by distributing
multiple antennas in the terminal [28]. A MIMO channel
capacity improvement of about 20% is observed using this dis-
tribution. A comprehensive analysis of different multi antenna
structures on MIMO channel capacity/diversity performance
for different user’s scenarios was presented in [29-36]. In
[29], the MIMO channel capacity for multi-antenna structure
is analyze for aspects: (1) the hand placed in a vertical position
along the terminal and (2) the distance variation between the
terminal chassis and hand palm. A 3.6 bit/s/Hz in the median
MIMO channel capacity reduction is seen when the hand and
antenna element are in close proximity. Meanwhile, a 2.5
bit/s/Hz reduction in channel capacity is observed when only
the index finger is in the proximity of the antenna element.
Dual-antenna structures based on coupled-elements applied
on a 2 GHz Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
(UMTS) mobile terminal was presented in [30]. The effects
of two significant hand positions were investigated by (1)
varying the vertical position of the hand along terminal chassis,
and (2) varying the distance between hand palm and terminal
chassis. It was observed that inter-element gain imbalance
exists in a uniformly distributed isotropic environment due
to the hand effects. It was also shown that by using maximal
ratio combining technique, a 3.7 dB gain imbalance leads to
a reduction of 1.9 dB in diversity gain. Several other multi-
antenna evaluations for LTE 3.5 GHz band were studied in
[31-34]. The effective diversity gain (EDG) is studied in [31]
for two user’s cases (data and browsing). The results shows
that by using two best out of four antenna elements at every
channel, a 2 dB higher EDG can be achieved. A high MIMO
channel capacity is achieved in [32] even in the presence of
a users hand operating in the 3.5 GHz band, with only a
15% of degradation in MIMO channel capacity. In [33], the
effect of the proper selection of antenna element location on
mobile chassis in the vicinity of user’s hand on the MIMO
capacity is investigated. An ergodic MIMO capacity of only
1.2 bit/s/Hz is achieved in such case, which is lower than the
ideal uncorrelated antennas. Meanwhile, the variation of the
number of antenna elements (two to eight) on performance
metrics in user’s case was reported in [34]. The study covers
the uniform and actual multipath environments. It shows that,
an additional radiation element does not necessarily yield
better performance. For handsets in data mode, the evaluated
mean outage capacity due to the user effects decreased up to
2.2 bit/s/Hz [35].
Measurement based evaluations of user hand and body on
mobile terminal performance in indoor office environment was
studied in [36]. It is found that the shadowing caused by
the user body insignificantly affects diversity and capacity
performance. Next, a detailed experimental evaluation with
user effect is performed for MIMO handset in [37]. A static 8
4 MIMO at 2.6 GHz is measured on user located indoors, with
two cases: a base station located outdoors and in another case,
located indoors. Statistical distributions of the eigenvalues for
MIMO are closely correlated with measurements using this
method. Apart from increased losses due to the hand and body

Fig. 7: Fabricated shielded antenna prototype [53].
which consequently decreased the channel Signal to Noise
Ratio (SNR), such setup also slightly increased the correlation
between the fading at the antenna elements.
The power loss caused by the user had a negative effect on
the TRP. The reduction of this radiated power translates into
degradation in channel capacity. Ultimately, the performance
of the MIMO terminals can be improved by placing antennas
at locations which are least obstructed by users. Several
previous researches studied antenna placements at specific
sites and in limited operating bands, thus requiring further
investigation for other cellular bands in the near future.
V. I MPACT OF U SER ON M ILLIMETER WAVE (MMW)
M OBILE T ERMINALS
The use of directive mmW phased array antenna is one
of the key enabling techniques in catering to the high data
rate requirement in 5G mobile communication systems [91].
The use of the mmW band will be more challenging in
designing antennas for mobile terminals. Typical 4G mobile
phone uses omnidirectional antennas to achieve coverage in
all direction (Fig. 4a) [39]. In contrast, for the coverage
issue in 5G can be mitigated by beam steering (Fig. 4b)
[39]. These 5G handsets are expected to be equipped with
highly directional and high gain adaptive antenna array [40],
which focuses the radiation energy in one direction, leading
to increase the thermal temperature if the main beam pointed
to the human body. Thus it is necessary ensure that antennas
with such directive characteristics are safe for use. To study
mmW propagation characteristic, the dielectric property of the
human skin has to be determined very accurately [41,42].
A compilation of relative permittivity and conductivity by
different researchers are shown in Fig. 5 [41].
A. mmW Mobile terminal antennas between 20 GHz and 60
GHz
Shadowing due to different objects at mmW such as human
has been noted to be significant in the propagation channel. So
far studies related to the human effect on mmW frequencies
are limited. In [43], the effect of the index finger for 60
GHz user device is reported to degrade antenna radiation
efficiency and detune its reflection properties when the finger
is less than 2 mm from the antenna. Meanwhile, the three
6
dimensional (3D) antenna radiation patterns in presence of
a user’s hand for different scanning angles at two different
positions were presented in [44]. It is seen that the antenna
realized gain is acceptable, with good beam steering function
at different scanning angles. Besides that, the effect of a
user’s hand on a switchable phased array antenna package
with 3D coverage for 5G was investigated in [38]. Its antenna
gain, radiation efficiency and total efficiency are reduced to
about 1.5 dB, 15% and 20%, respectively. However, it is also
seen that the changes in terms of impedance matching and
beam steering characteristics is insignificant in the vicinity
of a user’s hand. User effect for data mode and talk mode
for a 28 GHz switchable phased array with 3D-coverage is
illustrated in [45]. It was observed that the placement of the
switchable array on top of the chassis results in less body
loss, high realized gain and sufficient beam switching. An
additional linear array was integrated on its rear side for
“diversity”, in which the shadowing in talk mode can be
reduced. A recent statistical investigation of the user effect
for 5G mobile terminal application is presented in [46]. Real
time measurements were performed using 12 users in data and
talk modes, indicating that losses caused by the body is less
than 2 dB, which is way less than conventional cellular bands
below 3 GHz. A summary of the investigations of user’s effect
in the mmW band is illustrated in Fig. 6.
The effects of the shadowing from the human body at mmW
bands are much stronger compared to the lower cellular bands.
This is also one of the main reasons in reduced coverage
efficiency in mmW bands. This absorption tends to be lower
with the increased frequency, the body absorption can be
further reduced by suppressing the surface waves.
VI. T ECHNIQUES TO I MPROVE THE P ERFORMANCE OF
M ULTI -E LEMENT M OBILE T ERMINAL A NTENNA .
The human body is a lossy dielectric material and the
performance of antenna severely affected by the user’s hand.
This is due to the relative permittivities of biological tissues
such as human muscle, bone, blood and skin are higher than
the permittivity of air. This causes the change in impedance
environment in the near field zone of the antenna. The level
of water content in human tissues is also very high, making
them moderately conductive and causing losses at microwave
frequencies [47].
As the performance degradation due to user proximity in
MIMO terminals is an issue of growing importance, different
techniques for mitigating the user hand effect have been
proposed [48-62]. Besides that, to comprehensively investi-
gate this issue, many relevant user scenarios needs to be
considered [47]. Four CCE antennas were used to measure
input impedance and total efficiency using a hand phan-
tom in [48]. It was observed that the hand effect can be
partly eliminated using multi element antenna structures with
switching. Another method proposed in [49, 50] dynamically
selects the least affected antenna out of the four identical
elements located at the edges of the PCB, while [51, 52]
dynamically selects the least affected antenna out of two
identical elements. Measurements in [51, 52] indicated showed
 7

TABLE I: Summary for literature [49, 52-62]

Improvement in Results
Ref Technique
Increase in Efficiency (dB) Reduction in SAR (dB) Increase in Capacity (%) Increase in ME (dB)

[49] Dynamic selection of antenna N/A Average 1.2 in N/A N/A

LB/average 2.8 in UB
[52] Switchable antennas 2-8 in LB/1.7-2.5 in UB N/A N/A N/A
[53] Antenna Shielding 5.0 in LB/2.1 in UB N/A N/A N/A
[54] Antenna Shielding 4.8 N/A N/A N/A
[55] AIM N/A N/A 25 N/A
[56] AIM N/A N/A 43 N/A
[57] AIM N/A N/A 44 N/A
[58] AIM N/A N/A 44 N/A
[59] Using MD as a substrate 0.4 N/A N/A N/A
[60] Distributed antenna system 1.16 N/A N/A N/A
[61] Ground current modification 1.058 N/A N/A N/A
[62] TCM N/A N/A N/A 1.6
LB (Lower Band), UB (Upper band), N/A (Not Available).

up to 3.1 dB and 1.0 dB of average loss due to the body
proximity at 0.9 GHz and 1.9 GHz, respectively. Meanwhile,
total efficiency is improved of between 2 - 9 dB in the 0.824
- 0.894 GHz band and between 1 - 2 dB in the 1.850 - 2.170
GHz band [52]. Besides efficiency, these methods are shown
to improve the performance of mobile terminal in terms of
SAR. Meanwhile, antenna shielding has also been proposed
to reduce user influence [53, 54]. The technique uses two
identical non-self-resonating antennas placed on top of each
other at the corner of the terminal as depicted in Fig. 7, with
each pointing in the opposite direction. The antenna directed
opposite to the index finger is selected in data mode, since less
absorption is expected due to the hand, while the other one
operates as a shield. Meanwhile, an experimental evaluation
of the benefits of adaptive impedance matching (AIM) with
user and different channel conditions was performed in [55].
AIM offers significant capacity gains in proximity of user
by achieving higher received power (or lower correlation),
despite already accounting for the insertion losses of real
tuners [55]. This in turn increases the channel capacity for a
handheld MIMO terminal in an indoor environment [56] and in
many different user cases and propagation scenarios [57-58].
Moreover, capacity gain can also be increased up to 44% in a
uniform 3D angular power spectrum (APS). Besides shielding
and AIM, a new magneto-dielectric (MD) material was pro-
posed to compensate the user effect on mobile terminals. The
affected fields in the near-field region due to the high relative
permittivity of the hand phantom are mitigated by placing
the MD substrate on the opposite side of the hand phantom
[59]. Another method proposed in [60] introduces a distributed
antenna system on a ground plane. This technique combines
three monopole antennas on the ground plane instead of two
monopole antennas which provides more robustness to hand
loading effects. This method reduced losses significantly, from
10.6 dB to 4.1 dB.
Next, a new concept of using a variable length dual-band
parasitic ILA (inverted L antenna) to control the current
distribution on ground plane is used to reduce SAR and to
increase the radiation efficiency [61]. From the results it was
observed that SAR reduces from 2.6 W/kg to 1.26 W/kg for 1-
gram- average, and from 1.76 W/kg to 0.88 W/kg for 10-gram-
average. Meanwhile, its radiation efficiency is increased from
24.7% to 49.2%. The theory of characteristic mode (TCM)
is also another method used to enhance the multiplexing
efficiency [62]. It is shown that designs using TCM performed
better than the conventional antennas in terms of multiplexing
efficiency (ME), improving it by up to 1.6 dB. A summary of
the techniques and improvements from [49, 52-62] is tabulated
in Table-I.
As can be seen from the review, previous researchers are
more focused on improving the performance of the antenna for
cellular bands below 3.5 GHz. However, with the advent of
the 5G which uses “sub-6 GHz” bands from 3 to 6 GHz [63]
and mmW bands, there will be a need for efficient antennas
operating at higher frequencies above 3 GHz, especially when
they operates in close vicinity to users.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, the major challenges of mobile terminals and
potential techniques in improving antenna performance in the
vicinity of users are reviewed. The main aim of this review
is to identify the performance parameters and to assess the
level of degradation caused by users when these terminals are
operated within their vicinity. It is seen that the main challenge
is the degradation of total efficiency and power absorption
or absorption efficiency, which is caused by the presence of
human tissue within the antenna near field. Besides requiring
to fulfill all the regulatory standards in presence of human
body, antennas for handsets also need to conform to industrial
requirements.
Recent investigations on the human body effect and SAR on
single antennas and MIMO mobile terminals presented in this
work indicate that the placement of antennas with different
topologies is important in ensuring acceptable SAR values.
It is also observed that typically a ground free antenna is
always located at the bottom of the phone to ensure low SAR

values, whereas a grounded antenna will be placed on the top
edge of the phone to reduce correlation, due to its readily-
available SAR mitigation mechanism. Besides that, It is also
describes that the user’s index finger strongly influences the
antenna characteristics, especially on efficiency and MIMO
performance parameters. Different signal penetration depths
are found for antennas operating at different frequencies. A
10 dB mutual coupling loss was observed for frequencies
below 1 GHz, and this reduces to 5 dB for frequencies above
1 GHz. The total efficiency is also severely degraded to
around -17.6 dB for frequency below 1 GHz, due to head and
hand from -1.0 dB in free space (FS). However, the user’s
finger influences the channel capacity least compared to when
assessed in proximity of a full user’s hand. In mmW bands,
a smaller penetration depth is observed compared to lower
frequencies, thus only requiring a minimum distance of less
than 2 mm between antenna and user’s finger for improved
antenna radiation characteristics. Thus, understanding of the
signal behavior when operating in different frequency bands
in proximity of the user’s finger ensures quick mitigation of
their effects when designing antennas for mobile terminal.
The future focus of 5G which requires the implementation
of mmW MIMO mobile terminals has motivated this review.
This aspect and its effects on the MIMO channel capacity is of
specific concern due to the higher path loss compared to when
operating in the lower frequency bands. Most importantly,
different techniques proposed for mitigating the effects of user
on mobile terminal antennas have been identified in this work.
They include dynamic selection of the antenna, the application
of antenna shielding, AIM, placement of MD substrate on
the opposite side of the antenna, modification of the ground
current and TCM. It is also observed that antenna shielding
is by far the simplest and most effective method to maintain
reasonable efficiency and SAR when a user’s index finger is in
close proximity to the antenna. Meanwhile, the AIM technique
is preferred when one needs to enhance channel capacity. Fur-
ther development of new techniques based on these methods,
specifically aimed to improve antenna performance when used
in close vicinity to a user is very much desired in the near
future.
Due to the requirements of size compactness, multi-
band/multistandard operation, and the effects of the human
body, the antenna design for mobile terminal requires good
engineering judgments to balance the trade-off between the
phone appearance, size and the performance. Future researches
in this topic are geared towards the integration of mmW
antennas in mobile terminals and methods to reduce the impact
of the human body in maintaining the required performance
and in meeting regulatory requirements.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported financially by the Malaysian
Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI)
under Science fund (Project no: 01-01-015-SE0258)
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Rizwan Khan (S’15) was born in Abbottabad,
Pakistan, in 1990. He received the M.S. degree in
electrical engineering from the COMSATS Institute
of Information Technology, Abbottabad, in 2015.
He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree
at the School of Computer and Communication
Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP),
Arau, Malaysia.
In 2015, he joined the Department of Electrical
Engineering, COMSATS Institute of Information
Technology, as a Research Associate. He is a Re-
searcher at the Advanced Communication Engineering Centre, UniMAP. His
research interests include antenna and propagation for 5G communication,
mobile terminal antennas and their user interactions, multiple-input multiple-
output antenna systems, dielectric resonator antennas, reconfigurable antennas,
and millimeterwave antennas.
Azremi Abdullah Al-Hadi (S’13 M’13 SM’14) was
born on August 26, 1980 in Michigan, United States
of America. He received the Master of Science
degree in communication engineering from Birm-
ingham University, United Kingdom in 2004 and the
Doctor of Science in Technology degree from Aalto
University, Finland in 2013. His current research
interests include design and performance evaluation
of multi-element antennas, mobile terminal antennas
and their user interactions, and wireless propaga-
tion.
He is currently working as an Associate Professor and holds position as
Dean of the School of Computer and Communication Engineering, Universiti
Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP). He has been with the school since 2002. He is
active in volunteer work with IEEE Malaysia Section, acting as the Senior
Member of IEEE, executive committee in the IEEE Antenna Propagation / Mi-
crowave Theory techniques / Electromagnetic Compatibility (AP/MTT/EMC)
Malaysia Chapter and Counselor for the IEEE UniMAP Student Branch. He
is the Chartered Engineer of the Institution of Engineering and Technology
(IET), UK and the member of the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM),
Malaysia.
Dr. Azremi was the recipient of the Best Student Paper Award presented at
the 5th Loughborough Antennas and Propagation Conference (LAPC 2009)
and the CST University Publication Award in 2011.
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10
Ping Jack Soh (S’10-M’14-SM’15) was born in
Sabah, Malaysia. He received the bachelor’s and
master’s degrees in electrical engineering (telecom-
munication) from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
Johor Bahru, Malaysia, in 2002 and 2006, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven,
Belgium, in 2013.
He is currently an Associate Professor with the
School of Computer and Communication Engineer-
ing (SCCE), Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP),
Arau, Malaysia. From 2002 to 2004, he was a Test Engineer with Venture
Corp., working on hardware and software test solutions for the manufacturing
of all-in-one printers. In 2005, he joined Motorola Solutions Malaysia as an
R& D Engineer. There, he worked on the characterization and testing of
new two-way radios antennas and RF front-ends. In 2006, he joined SCCE,
UniMAP, as a Lecturer, and also served as the Deputy Director of the Centre
for Industrial Collaboration between 2007 and 2009. He went on leave from
UniMAP in 2009 to pursue his Ph.D. research with the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven. He was first a Research Assistant (2009-2013), then a Postdoctoral
Research Fellow (2013-2014), and is currently an External Research Affiliate
with the ESAT- TELEMIC Research Division. Upon his return to UniMAP, he
resumed his role as a Senior Lecturer and concurrently served as the Deputy
Dean of the university’s Research Management and Innovation Center between
2014 and 2017. His research interests include wearable antennas, arrays,
metasurfaces, and systems; on-body communication; electromagnetic safety
and absorption; and wireless and radar techniques for healthcare applications.
Dr. Soh was a recipient of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society
Doctoral Research Award in 2012, the IEEE Microwave Theory and Tech-
niques Society (MTT-S) Graduate Fellowship for Medical Applications in
2013, and the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist
Award in 2015. He was also the Second Place Winner of the IEEE Presidents’
Change the World Competition and IEEE MTT-S Video Competition, both
in 2013. He was also awarded the CST University Publication Award for
his two (co)authored journals in 2012 and 2011. As a project advisor, his
supervised students have also received prizes such as the IEEE MTT-S
Undergraduate Scholarship in 2016, the First Place in the Innovate Malaysia
Design Competition (Motorola Track) in 2016, and the First Place in the IEEE
Malaysia Section Final Year Project Competition (Telecommunication Track)
in 2015. He is a Chartered Engineer registered with the U.K. Engineering
Council, a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the
Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society, and URSI, and a graduate
member of the Board of Engineers Malaysia and the Institution of Engineers,
Malaysia. He also serves in the IEEE MTT-S EduComm and the IEEE MTT-S
M&S Committee.