A Wideband Compact Four Element T-Shape MIMO Antenna at 38 GHz for Future 5G Smart Devices

This study describes the design and implementation of a T-shaped four-port compact MIMO antenna operating at 38 GHz for 5G smart device applications. The antenna is 20x20 mm2 in size, and it is made of a 0.76 mm thicker Rogers RO4350B with a dielectric constant of 3.66. The radiating element of the reported antenna is a T-shape patch obtained through a three-step simple process with a downward extension having length nearly equal to that of the of width of the feedline for better performance. Each antenna in the proposed MIMO antenna has a high gain of 10 dBi at 37 GHz, 9.6 dBi at 38 GHz with broadband characteristics of roughly 10 GHz stretching from 36-46 GHz. To reduce the effects of mutual coupling among the antennas that are near together, crescent type of arcs with curved edges is employed as a decoupling structure. Furthermore, the proposed MIMO Antenna is characterized by basic MIMO performance metrics such as Envelope Correlation Coefficient (ECC) of less than 0.10 between any two-element array encountering the required condition of (<0.5), good Diversity Gain (DG) of 9.99 dB, and minimum isolation of -18 dB with a total efficiency of 86 percent at 38 GHz.