Eight-port multiband MIMO antenna design with high isolation for 5G smartphones

Abstract This paper presents the design and analysis of a compact eight-port multiband multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) antenna for 5G smartphones. The proposed antenna structure is designed using meandering elements, as radiator, on the FR4 substrate of 150 × 80 × 0.8 mm with loss tangent (tan δ) of 0.02 and relative permittivity (ε r ) of 4.4. The proposed antenna resonates at 2.4, 3.5, and 5.5 GHz, and it covers the bandwidth of 2%, 6.28%, and 2.53%, respectively. The measured results provide an omnidirectional radiation pattern with 58%–78% of efficiency in all operating bands. The eight-port multiband MIMO design provides a high isolation of 17.5 dB, envelope correlation coefficient < 0.04, diversity gain of 9.98 dB, total active reflection coefficient < −10 dB, and channel capacity loss of <0.25 bits/s/Hz. Also, the hand phantom is designed to analyze the reflection coefficients and efficiency of the proposed antenna.