2016 URSI Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference

August 21-25, 2016 / Seoul, Korea

Measurement
Compact Eightand
MIMOAnalysis of Weather
Antennas Phenomena
for 5G Smartphones
withMIMO
and Their K-Band Rain Radar
Capacity Verification
Kin-LuJun-Hyeong ParkTsai, Jun-Yu Lu, De-Ming Chian
Wong, Chih-Yu Ki-Bok Kong Wei-YuSeong-Ook
Li Park
Dept. of Department
Electrical Engineering
of Electrical Engineering Development team Dept. of Electrical
Information and Communications ResearchEngineering
Laboratories
KAIST Sun Yat-sen University
National Kukdong Telecom KAIST
Industrial Technology Research Institute
DaeJeon, Republic of Korea
Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan Nonsan, Republic of Korea DaeJeon,
Hsinchu 31040, Republic of Korea
Taiwan
bdsfh0820@kaist.ac.kr Kbkong@kdtinc.co.kr soparky@kaist.ac.kr

Abstract—The handset or smartphone antenna has evolved achievable channel capacities for the MIMO operation with at
from the externalovercome
Abstract—To antenna before the year
blind spots of an2000 to the weather
ordinary internal least four MIMO
wall exists between antennas in the smartphone
the transmitter to verify(Rx)
(Tx) and receiver the
antenna
radar which andscanscasing-integrated
horizontally at aantenna for a2G/3G/4G
high altitude, weather predicted
antennas channel
to improvecapacities.
isolation between them. With these
communications
radar which operates till vertically,
now. For the an
so called fifth-generation (5G)
atmospheric profiler, methods, leakage power between Tx and Rx could be reduced.
communications,
is needed. In thisitpaper,
is expected that the
a K-band Massive
radar MIMO system
for observing is
rainfall Recently, in Nov. 2015, the WRC-15 (World
Fig. 1 shows manufactured antennas and the separation wall.
very promising
vertically for applications
is introduced, and a large
and measurement number
results of MIMO
of rainfall are Radiocommunication Conference 2015) identified a new
antennas
shown andwill be attractive
discussed. to beperformance
For better deployed in the smartphone
of the atmospheric to frequency spectrum of 3400~3600 MHz for global mobile
effectively increase B. Design of
broadband Tranceiver
services [3]. This frequency spectrum is promising
profiler, the radarthe channel
which hascapacity. In this paper,
high resolution even promising
with low
compact eight
transmitted MIMO
power antennasWith
is designed. in thethis
smartphone are presented.
radar, a melting layer is for application in a5Gblock
Fig. 2 shows mobilediagram of the K-band
communications. Thisrain radar.
motivates
The MIMO
detected and someantennas
resultsare
that operated in the 3.5-GHz
show characteristics band
of the meting Reference
the presentsignals
study for all PLLs
to devise in the system
promising and eight
compact clock MIMO
signals
(3400~3600 MHz), which
layer are measured well. has been recently identified in WRC-15 for everyfor
antennas digital
the 5G chip in baseband
smartphone are generated
applications. by four
The proposed
for global mobile broadband services in the future. The frequency
MIMO synthesizers.
antennas In the Tx
has a compact baseband
structure than module, a field
that reported in
achievable MIMO channel
Keywords—K-band; capacities
FMCW; rainforradar;
the proposed compact
low transmitted programmable
[4] and also hasgate array width
a narrow (FPGA) of 1controls
mm only, a less
directthandigital
that
eight
power;MIMO antennasrainfall;
high resolution; are calculated and verified by MIMO
melting layer synthesizer
reported (DDS)
in [2], [5]. Theto generate
compact size an ofFMCW signal MIMO
the proposed which
OTA (over-the-air) testing in the open space. Results are decreases makes
antennas with time (down-chirp)
it promising to beand has a center
embedded in thefrequency
narrow
presented and discussed. of 670 MHz.
region between Thethe
sweep bandwidth
casing and the islarge
50 MHz which
display gives
panel the
along
I. INTRODUCTION
hightwo
the range
sideresolution
edges of the of smartphone.
3 m. Considering the cost, 2.4 GHz
A weather radar usually
Keywords—smartphone antennas,measures
MIMO meteorological
antennas, 5G
signal used as a reference clock input of the DDS is split and
conditions of over
communications, a wide
MIMO area at a high altitude. Because it
capacity
usedIn for
this astudy,
local typical Massive
oscillator (LO). MIMOthe FMCW systemssignalfor 5G is
observes weather phenomena in the area, it is mainly used for communications
transmitted towardare described
raindrops with inthe Sec.
powerII.of The proposed
only 100 mW.
weather forecasting. I.However, blind spots exist because an
INTRODUCTION compact eight MIMO
Beat frequency which has antennas
data of in the
the range
smartphone
and theand the
radial
ordinary weather radar scans horizontally, which results in measured results of the MIMO OTA testing in
velocity of raindrops is carried by 60 MHz and applied to the the open space
2 x 2 MIMO
difficulties (multiple-input
in obtaining information multiple-output)
on rainfall at system has
higher and are
been inputpresented
of the Rx in Sec. III
baseband and IV.
module. The
In the Rxmeasured channel
baseband module,
lower successfully
altitudes than applied
the specificfor altitude.
the fourth-generation
Therefore, a weather (4G) capacities
quadrature for 8 x 4 and 4isx performed
demodulation 4 MIMO operation
by a digital have down
been
mobile
radar thatcommunications.
covers the blind spots For such applications, two LTE
is required. obtained
MIMO antennas are required to be embedded in the converterand will Thus,
(DDC). be discussed.
detectableConclusion
range canisbesummarized
doubled than in
A weather radar2 xthat scans operation
vertically incould solve the Sec. V.
usual. Two Dimensional-Fast Fourier Transform (2D-FFT) is
smartphone for the 2 MIMO the LTE bands
problem.
such as inThisthe kind
698~960of weather radar, so called
and 1710~2690 an atmospheric
MHz bands [1]. It is performed by two FPGAs. Because the 2D FFT is performed
profiler,
also points towards
predicted that forthethe skyLTE and observes meteorological
MIMO operation, the with
II. 1024
MASSIVEbeat MIMO
signals,SYSTEMS
the radarFOR can5G COMMUNICATIONS
have high resolution of
conditions according
achievable to the increases
channel capacity height [1]. Also,
with the because
numbers the of the radial velocity. Finally, data of raindrops are transferred to
atmospheric
both the MIMO profiler usually
antennas operates
in both continuously
the smartphone andatthe
a fixed
base a PC with local LAN via the an UDP protocol. TABLE I.
position, Itit has
stations. couldbeencatch the sudden
reported that with change
eightofMIMO
weather in the
antennas shows main specification of the system.
specific
in area.
the smartphone for the 8 x 8 MIMO operation, the
achievable channel
In this paper, capacity
K-band raincan be which
radar about 37 hasbps/Hz at 20-dB
low transmitted
signal-to-noise
power and high resolutions of the range and the velocitythat
ratio (SNR) [2], which is close to 8 times is
of a single The
introduced. antenna for SISO
frequency (single-input
modulated single-output)
continuous wave
operation. With such is
(FMCW) technique a channel
used tocapacity
achieve and higha wide frequency
sensitivity and
spectrum (for example, at least 200 MHz),
reduce the cost of the system. In addition, meteorological the data rate can be Fig. 1. Massive MMO systems for 5G communications. (a) 3D base-
much
resultshigher than 1 Gbps.
are discussed. In this regard,
Reflectivity, a fall the MIMO
speed antennas
of raindrops station MIMO antennas for multi-users. (b) Planar base-station MIMO
with at least spectrum
and Doppler eight antennasmeasuredin thewhen smartphone
it rained are promising
are described, antennas for the smartphone with multiple MIMO antennas.
for application of
and characteristics in thethe fifth-generation
melting layer are analyzed (5G)as well.
mobile
communications. Fig. 1 shows typical Massive MIMO systems for 5G
communications. In Fig. 1(a), the base station antennas are in
However, owing to
II. DEVELOPMENT the AND
OF K-B veryRAIN
limited
RADARspace
SYSTEM in the a three-dimensional circular cylindrical array structure, and the
smartphone, it is very challenging to embed a large number of mobile unit can have one or multiple antennas. In Fig. 1(b),
MIMO antennas (for example, at least eight antennas) therein
A. Antenna the base station antennas are in a planar array structure, which
withTogood isolation
suppress with low
side-lobe envelope
levels correlation
and increase coefficients
an antenna gain, Fig. 1. itManufactured
makes suitable toantenna and separation
be mounted wall. flat surfaces of the
on the
(ECCs). In addition, there are very few measured results
offset dual reflector antennas are used [2]. Also, separation of the building. The smartphone antennas in Fig. 1(b) can have at

1054
1 978-1-4673-8801-6/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
least eight MIMO antennas along two side edges of the house software receiver including the MIMO detector are used
smartphone to achieve a much higher channel capacity for the in the receiver side for the MIMO testing.
MIMO operation. It is also noted that the two short edges (top
and bottom edges) of the smartphone are reserved to
accommodate the 2G/3G/4G antennas.

III. COMPACT EIGHT MIMO ANTENNAS IN THE SMARTPHONE

FOR 3.5-GHZ LTE MIMO OPERATION

Fig. 2(a) shows the compact eight MIMO antennas for

operating in the 3.5-GHz band (3400~3600 MHz) [3]. The
quad antenna linear (QAL) array [2] is applied. The QAL
array is constructed based on the open-slot antenna structure
[6] and has a size of 1 x 60 mm2 along the side edge of the
system circuit board in the smartphone. The four antennas in Fig. 3. 4 x 4 LTE MIMO capacity testing with distance 6 meters between the
the QAL array has a total length of 60 mm and a narrow width receiver (4 smartphone antennas) and transmitter (4 base-station
of 1 mm only. Each antenna in the QAL array has acceptable antennas) and non-line-of-sight condition.
antenna efficiency better than 45%, and the ECC between two
antennas thereof is less than 0.1. For the system circuit board,
it has a size of 75 x 150 mm2, which is reasonable for the
modern smartphone.
The four dual-polarized patch antennas used as the base
station antennas are also shown in Fig. 2(b). The four dual-
polarized patch antennas have a size of 14.5 x 14.5 cm2 and
can provide up to eight isolated ports for the MIMO operation.
The antenna efficiency for each port is better than 90% and the
ECC between two antennas thereof are very small (close to 0).
Very good isolation for the base station antennas is obtained.
Fig. 4. 8 x 4 MIMO capacity testing with distance 6 meters between the
receiver (8 smartphone antennas) and transmitter (4 base-station
antennas) and non-line-of-sight condition.

Typical testing results (the SNR results at each receive

(a) (b)
Fig. 2. (a) Compact eight MIMO antennas in the smartphone and (b) four
dual-polarized patch antenna for 3.5-GHz LTE 8 x 4 and 4 x 4 MIMO
operation.
IV. LTE MIMO ANTENNAS CHANNEL CAPACITY TESTING
Fig. 3 shows the 4 x 4 LTE MIMO testing arrangement.
Four ports in the smartphone [Fig. 2(a)] are used as the receive
antennas, and four ports in the base station antennas [Fig.
2(b)] are used as the transmit antennas. On the other hand, Fig.
4 shows the 8 x 4 LTE MIMO testing arrangement. In this
case, eight ports in the smartphone are used as the receive
antennas, and four ports in the base station antennas are for the
transmit antennas. Also note that the R&S vector signal
generator [7] is connected to the base station antennas for
transmit the LTE signals. The R&S digital scope and the in-
antenna and the channel capacities) of the 4 x 4 and 8 x 4
MIMO operation are listed in Table I and II. The calculated
capacities obtained by assuming independently and identically
distributed (i.i.d) wave propagation channels with Rayleigh
fading environment are shown for comparison. In addition,
results with the user’s hand holding the smartphone are also
shown for discussion.
It is seen that the measured capacities in general agree with
the calculated results for the cases with and without the user’s
hand. The results indicate that although the eight MIMO
antennas are compact in size and totally has a length of 60 mm
only (about 0.7 wavelength at 3.5 GHz), the obtained MIMO
capabilities in general agree with the theoretical prediction.
This suggests that if the ECC between two antennas can be as
low as possible (for example, less than 0.1), the compact size
of the MIMO antennas has very small effects on the MIMO
performance.
TABLE I. 4 x 4 MIMO capacity testing results.

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 TABLE II. 8 x 4 MIMO capacity testing results.
For the case of 8 x 4 MIMO with user’s hand presence, the
measured capacity is 22.4 bps/Hz. In this case, the upper limit
of the data transmission for a 200-MHz bandwidth can be
about 4.4 Gbps. With the obtained results, it can be expected
that the achievable capacity of the 8 x 8 MIMO can be larger
than 30 bps/Hz. In this case, the upper limit of the data
transmission can be increased to be larger than 6 Gbps with a
200-MHz bandwidth.
V. CONCLUSION
A promising design of compact eight MIMO antennas in
the smartphone has been presented. The measured channel
capacities for the 4 x 4 and 8 x 4 MIMO operation with and
without user’s hand presence have been obtained. The
measured capacities in general agree with the calculated
results. The obtained results in this study suggest that the
Massive MIMO operation with at least eight antennas in the
smartphone is promising for 5G mobile communications to
achieve the data transmission much higher than 1 Gbps.
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Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the Communication
Technology Lab. Lead by Prof. Chao-Kai Wen to develop the
software receiver at the receive antenna side for the MIMO
OTA testing. The testing equipment support of
Rohde&Schwarz (R&S) is also greatly appreciated.
References
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