Eight-Port Double Band Printed MIMO Antenna Investigated for Mutual-Coupling and SAR Effects for Sub-6 GHz 5G Mobile Applications

An 8-element/8-port antenna with four resonating dual-polarized slot radiator elements for sub-6 GHz 5G multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) applications is proposed in this paper. The proposed MIMO design comprises four annular slot radiators with dual-polarized characteristic and has rectangular micro-strip line feeds. The designed elements operate in the frequency bands 2.73-3.12 GHz and 4.33-4.68 GHz providing an acceptable characteristic for dual-polarizations. The isolation improvement and reduction in mutual coupling factor are achieved by using split ring resonator (SRR) structures on the top layer along the slot radiator. The proposed design has a -10 dB wide impedance bandwidth in both bands, considerable realized peak gain around 4dBi, and better efficiencies around 80% with ECC < 0.004 which has enhanced the performance of the MIMO array in terms of diversity. The antenna is fabricated, characterized, and it is shown that the measured results are in good agreement with the simulated ones. The proposed MIMO design has been analyzed for SAR functions and the radiation coverage in the vicinity of the user human head. The SAR values studied are found to be less than '2' which is quite desirable. All the features achieved in the proposed MIMO design suggest it to be suitable for 5G mobile terminal applications.