Accepted Manuscript

Design of a four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna using half-slot

structure

Bing Yang, Minzhe Chen, Lingyun Li

PII: S1434-8411(18)30105-5
DOI: [Link]
Reference: AEUE 52355

To appear in: International Journal of Electronics and Communi-

cations

Received Date: 12 January 2018

Accepted Date: 28 May 2018

Please cite this article as: B. Yang, M. Chen, L. Li, Design of a four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna
using half-slot structure, International Journal of Electronics and Communications (2018), doi: [Link]
10.1016/[Link].2018.05.034

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 Design of a four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO
antenna using half-slot structure

Bing Yang∗ , Minzhe Chen, Lingyun Li

Department of Electronics and Information Engineering, Central China Normal University,
Wuhan,China

Abstract

This article presents a compact four-element MIMO antenna for WLAN/LTE/UWB

application. The half-slot structure and half-cut monopole antenna technique
are adopted to realize bandwidth from 2 GHz to 10.6 GHz while maintain-
ing good isolation better than 15 dB and compact size of 31 × 31 × 1.6 mm.
Each antenna element is composed of a quasi-semi-ellipse radiator and a pro-
tuberant ground. To be practical in a real application scenario, four antenna
elements with interconnected/common ground are placed orthogonal to each
other for good isolation. Key parameters affecting the antenna performance are
investigated and a prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated for measure-
ment. The simulated and measured results agree well, testifying the proposed
four-element MIMO antenna is a suitable candidate for WLAN/LTE/UWB ap-
plication.
Keywords: UWB antenna, MIMO, half-slot structrue, WLAN/LTE/UWB

1. Introduction

With the rapid advances in wireless technologies, many modern communica-

tion systems now can support more than one wireless service or standard, such
as WLAN, LTE, ultrawideband (UWB) and some combinations of them[1–3]. In

∗ Correspondingauthor
Email address: yangb19881114@[Link] (Bing Yang∗ )

Preprint submitted to AEU-Int J Electron Commun May 29, 2018

 5 addition, in order to overcome multipath fading and improve the quality of com-
munication channels prominently, four-element multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO) antennas are proposed in contemporary communication systems [4, 5].
Therefore, the design of a four-element MIMO antenna with an enough band-
width to operate in multiple wireless communication systems is of high interest.
10 Such antenna should exhibit good performance over the entire operating bands
while maintaining a compact size and good isolation, which is a signification
issue for current works.
It is noteworthy that four-element MIMO antennas reported in [5–10] only
operate over the UWB frequency band, whereas in [11] the isolation performance
15 gets worse for frequencies below 3 GHz. In [4], the four-element fractal UWB
MIMO antenna achieves an impedance bandwidth from 2 to 10.6 GHz with
isolation greater than 17 dB, however, in which separate not-connected grounds
(GNDs) could not be practical in a real application scenario according to the
design concepts proposed in [12, 13]. From the view of the circuit design for
20 practical, MIMO antennas with multiple separate not-connected grounds should
be avoided, since the signals should have a common reference plane, i.e., a
common ground, to help the system interpret all signal levels properly.
To the best of our knowledge, compared with other antenna structures, the
half-slot structure proposed in [14] can reduce the entire size of the MIMO
25 antenna significantly, though the Y-shaped slot is required to enhance the iso-
lation at low-UWB band. Meanwhile, the half-cut monopole antenna technique
is implemented to obtain wider and better impedance bandwidth, which is elab-
orately discussed in [15].
In this paper, a compact four-element MIMO antenna is presented for WLAN/LTE/UWB
30 application. In order to obtain wider and better bandwidth, good isolation and
compact size, the half-slot structure and half-cut monopole antenna technique
are utilized in the design. Each antenna element is comprised of a quasi-semi-
ellipse radiator and a protuberant ground. Considering the design concepts
for practical application scenario, four antenna elements are placed in sym-
35 metric fashion with interconnected/common ground. Compared to two-element

2
 Figure 1: Geometry of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna.

antenna, the four-element antenna can enhance the quality of communication

channels significantly. Details of antenna design and effective parameters of the
antenna performance are presented and discussed. The simulated and measured
results indicate that the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO an-
40 tenna satisfies the requirement of contemporary wireless communication sys-
tems.

2. Antenna design

2.1. Antenna configuration

Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB

45 MIMO antenna fed by CWP with dimensions of 31 × 31 mm. It is fabricated on
FR4 substrate (dielectric constant of 4.4, loss tangent of 0.02), with thickness of

3
 Table 1: Optimized antenna parameters

Parameter Value(mm) Parameter Value(mm)

W 31 L 31
Wg 2.6 Lg 4.5
W1 2.9 L1 10.3
W2 8.5 L2 9.3
W3 0.3 S 7.7
W4 3.74 g 0.7
Wf 1.6 - -

1.6 mm. Each element of the proposed four-element MIMO antenna consists of
a quasi-semi-ellipse radiator and a protuberant ground, which is called half-slot
structure. Such structure originates from [14] and is inspired by half-cut antenna
50 technique proposed in [15]. Placing adjacent antenna elements orthogonally to
each other is helpful to obtain better isolation among them. The design of
the proposed antenna is carried out by CST Microwave Studio. The optimized
dimensions of the proposed antenna are listed in Table 1.

2.2. Effect of half-cut monopole antenna

55 To study the effect of half-cut monopole antenna, an initial four-element

MIMO antenna (IFMA) is designed as depicted in Fig. 2. It can be seen that
each element of IFMA consists of an ellipse radiator and a protuberant ground.
These element antennas are denoted as Ant 1, Ant 2, Ant 3, Ant 4, which are
excited by Ports 1-4, respectively. For symmetry, only simulated S-parameters
60 of Port 1 are plotted in Fig. 3, and the others are omitted for simplification.
It is clear that Ant 1 exhibits an impedance bandwidth extending from 2.05
to 10.03 GHz with S11 < −10 dB. The isolation between antennas elements is
better than 17 dB over the whole operational band.
It is noted that IFMA cannot cover the entire UWB band of 3.1-10.6 GHz
65 with S11 < −10 dB. To solve such problem, half-cut antenna technique is

4
 Figure 2: Geometry of the initial four-element MIMO antenna.

Figure 3: Simulated S-Parameters of IFMA.

adopted to achieve wider and better impedance bandwidth as shown in Fig. 1.

The cost function (goal) is defined as follows:

5
Figure 4: Simulated (a) S11, (b) S21, (c) S31, (d) S41 with different values of L2, in steps of
0.3 mm.

Figure 5: Simulated (a) S11, (b) S21, (c) S31, (d) S41 of IFMA and the proposed MIMO
antenna.

6
 Figure 6: Simulated S21 of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna
with parameter variation of s, in steps of 4 mm.

10.6

Cost = S11 (f ) (1)
2.0
⎧
⎨ S (f ), S11 (f ) ≥ −10 dB
11
S11 (f ) = (2)
⎩ 0, S11 (f ) < −10 dB
In this design, the ellipse-shaped patch is chopped off along the edge of the
feed. It is necessary to move the ellipse-shaped radiator along the orthogonal
70 orientation of the feed to fulfill the requirement of bandwidth and isolation
simultaneously, which are mainly affected by the parameter “L2” representing
the distance of the center of the radiator away from the edge of the feed. Such
method is inspired by the discussion on the design of the printed ellipse monopole
antenna (PEMA) in [16]. Keep the height fixed, the lower band-edge frequency
75 of the PEMA can remain almost the same. Moreover, the current of PEMA is
distributed mainly along the edge of radiator and the feed point. So the variation
of “L2” can provide a possibility to expand the higher band-edge frequency in
our design.
The effect of the value of L2 on S-Parameters is depicted in Fig. 4(a)-(d). It
80 is observed from Fig. 4 that the value of L2= 0.3 mm can realize both desired
bandwidth and isolation performance.

7
 Figure 7: Simulated 3D radiation pattern of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB
MIMO antenna at 6 GHz: (a) Port 1 excited, (b) Port 2 excited, (c) Port 3 excited, and (d)
Port 4 excited, when the other ports are terminated with 50 Ohm loads.

To better study the effect of half-cut antenna technique, simulated S-parameters

of IFMA and the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna are
plotted in Fig. 5, respectively. It is clear from Fig. 5 that the proposed half-cut
85 antenna technique can enhance bandwidth at the high-UWB band (up to 10.9
GHz), at the expense of isolation decreased by about 2 dB at the low operating
band. Even so, for the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO an-
tenna, the isolation between antenna elements is greater 15 dB inherently, which
is adequate for a good MIMO/diversity performance. Note that it is necessary
90 to design a MIMO antenna with good isolation at frequency below 3.1 GHz for
WLAN/LTE/UWB applications, despite scarcely in open literature [17, 18].

8
 Figure 8: Simulated surface current distribution of the proposed four-element
WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna at (a) 2.5 GHz, (b) 5.36 GHz, (c) 9.5 GHz. When Port
1 excited, the other ports are match-terminated.

2.3. Isolation mechanism between antenna elements

According to [8], the isolation between antenna elements of the proposed

four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna is mainly affected by spacing
95 between the adjacent radiators, which depends upon the parameter “s” as shown
in Fig. 6. From Fig. 6, as the value of “s” increases, the isolation improves
a litter at the lower band at the cost of larger antenna size, though it shows
limited or minimal significance at the middle and higher band. When s=7.7
mm, not only good isolation but also compact size can be achieved.
100 In order to further investigate isolation mechanism, 3-D radiation pattern
of each antenna elements at 6 GHz with different ports excited is shown in Fig.
7, respectively. As Port 1, Port 2, Port 3, Port 4 are excited, the proposed
four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna radiates in negative x-axis,
negative y-axis, x-axis and y-axis orientation respectively, which illustrates the
105 pattern diversity characteristics. In detail, Ant 1 and Ant 2 have orthogonal
polarization which results in negligible E-field overlap between them. As well,
Ant 1 and Ant 3 have the same polarization but opposite directions, which leads
to a weak E-field interaction between them. The multidirectional radiation
characteristics facilitate good isolation.
110 The simulated surface current distribution of the proposed four-element
WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna at three frequencies of 2.5, 5.36, and 9.5

9
 Figure 9: Simulated and measured S-parameters of the proposed four-element
WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna. (a) S11 and S21. (b) S31 and S41.

GHz is displayed in Fig. 8. When Port 1 excited, the other ports are match-
terminated with 50Ω. Since both the quasi-semi-ellipse radiator and the pro-
tuberant ground are the parts of the antenna, the current mainly concentrates
115 around the edges of the patch or the ground. Owing to the half-slot structures
and orthogonal placement of antenna elements, current flowing across to the
others ports is very weak with Port 1 excited as shown in Fig. 8.

10
 Figure 10: Simulated 2-D radiation patterns of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB
MIMO antenna with Port 1 exited. (a) xoz-plane. (b) xoy-plane. (c) yoz-plane.

3. Results and discussion

The proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna is fabricated

120 and measuring by an Agilent’s E8362B PNA network analyzer. Its prototype
and measured S-parameters are plotted in Fig. 9, where, for brevity, only S-
parameters of Port 1 are given. During the measurement of Port 1, the others are
match-terminated with 50Ω loads. From Fig. 9, the results show the antenna
has a wide bandwidth from 2 GHz to more than 10.6 GHz with S11< -10

11
 Figure 11: Simulated gain of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna.

Figure 12: Simulated 3D radiation pattern of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB

MIMO antenna at (a) 3 GHz, (b) 5 GHz, (c) 7 GHz, (d) 9 GHz when Port 1 excited.

125 dB. Besides, good isolation is inherently obtained with S21&S3&S41<-15 dB

at the entire operating band due to half-slot structures and half-cut monopole

12
 Figure 13: ECC of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna.

Figure 14: DG of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna.

structures aforementioned. The discrepancies and shifts between simulated and

measured results are mainly caused by variations in permittivity and thickness
of substrate, fabrication inaccuracy, soldering, SMA connections and measuring
130 environment.
Fig. 10 shows 2-D simulated radiation patterns of the proposed four-element
WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna with Port 1 exited. As observed from Fig.
10 (a) and (b), the 2-D radiation patterns in xoz-plane and xoy-plane are quasi-
omnidirectional and relatively directional around angle of 270, since the strong

13
135 power of Prot 1 radiates toward negative x-axis. As shown in Fig. 10(c), the
radiation patterns in yoz-plane are also quasi-omnidirectional instead of dipole-
like. This is because of the current flowing on the protuberant ground plane as
shown in Fig. 8, which leads to the null is moved away from the yoz-plane as
observed in the 3-D radiation patterns in Fig. 7. Thus it can be seen that the
140 2-D radiation patterns are in accordance with the 3-D radiation patterns.
Fig. 11 shows the gain and efficiency of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB
MIMO antenna. From Fig. 11, the gain is relatively stable and the efficiency is
above 70% in most of the operation frequency band. Fig. 12 presents 3-D radia-
tion patterns of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna
145 at 3, 5, 7, 9 GHz when Port 1 is excited and others are matched with 50Ω loads.
It can be observed that the direction of the main radiation is not changing much
with frequency. Thus, it is not a problem, though the gain varies quite much.
Envelope correction coefficient (ECC) and diversity gain (DG) are key pa-
rameters to evaluate diversity performance. As given in [19], the ECC and
150 DG can be calculated using (3) and (4), respectively. Figs. 13 and 14 show the
ECC and DG of the proposed four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna,
respectively. For a good MIMO/diversity application, the limits for the ECC
is below 0.5[6]. As observed, the ECC is below 0.005 and the DG is greater
than 9.97, verifying very low correlation between antenna elements and good
155 MIMO/diversity performance..

∗ ∗
|S11 S12 + S21 S22 |2
ρe = (3)
(1 − |S11 |2 − |S21 |2 )(1 − |S22 |2 − |S12 |2 )


DG = 10 1 − |ρe |2 (4)

Finally, Table 2 provides a comparison between our design with some other
four-element UWB MIMO antennas. It can be observed that the proposed
four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB MIMO antenna has compact size, good isola-
tion, wide impedance bandwidth and common ground that make it suitable and
160 practical for modern wireless communication systems.

14
 Table 2: Comparison with some of previous works

Design Size (mm) Operating band (GHz) Isolation (dB) Common ground ECC DG

[4] 45 × 45 2-10.6 17 No < 0.005 -

[5] 60 × 60 2.73-10.68 15 No - -
[6] 40 × 40 3.1-11 20 No < 0.004 -
[7] 42 × 25 3.2-12 22 Yes < 0.01 -
[8] 24 × 24 3-10.9 20 Yes < 0.002 -
[9] 48 × 48 3-11 15 Yess - < 0.99
[10] 50 × 50 3-12 15 Yess < 0.3 -
[11] 60 × 41 3-10.6 20 Nos < 0.25 -
This work 31 × 31 2-10.6 15 Yess < 0.005 < 9.97

4. Conclusion

A four-element MIMO antenna has been proposed for WLAN/LTE/UWB

application. The application of half-slot structure and half-cut monopole struc-
ture helps to achieve miniaturization, wideband phenomena and good isolation
165 of greater than 15 dB throughout the entire operating band. Each element an-
tenna consists of a quasi-semi-ellipse radiator and a protuberant ground. The
design of four element antennas with interconnected/common ground plane
significantly improves its effectiveness and practicability in a real application
scenario. Analysis results illustrate that the four-element WLAN/LTE/UWB
170 MIMO antenna exhibits some performance such as small size, good isolation, ap-
proximately multidirectional radiation patterns and relatively stable gain, which
proves it is a good candidate for modern wireless communication systems.

5. Acknowledgements

This work has been financially supported by the Natural Science foundation
175 of Hubei Province under Grants No. 2017CFB591.

15
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