Performance study of a MIMO mobile terminal with upto 18 elements operating in the sub-6 GHz 5G band with user hand

This paper investigates the performance variation when a different number of antenna elements (AEs) is integrated onto a single MIMO mobile terminal, both in free space and when held in a user hand in data mode. Starting with a minimum of two AEs, this investigation assessed the performance of the MIMO terminal with every additional two AEs (up to 18 AEs) in terms of envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), efficiency, multiplexing efficiency, capacity and maximal ratio combining (MRC). The integrated MIMO antennas are identical and operate between 5 and 6 GHz for 5G applications. Results indicated that ECC increased with the number of AEs. However, ECC remains less than 0.32 for the case of 18 AEs in both free space and with a user hand. Meanwhile, the free space efficiency of about 90 % for the two AEs is observed to decrease with the increasing number of AEs to about 50 % with 18 AEs. However, the efficiency of elements changes with user hand depending on the level of interaction between each element and the hand. Direct blockage of AEs by the hand resulted in efficiencies of as low as 5 %, while at the same time, other AEs retained an efficiency of up to 75 %. At the center frequency of 5.5 GHz, the free space capacity is 11.1, 49.5 and 83.2 bit/s/Hz with two, ten and 18 AEs, respectively. However, the use of the mobile terminal in the proximity of the user hand degraded these levels by 11 % (two AEs), 35 % (10 AEs) and 31 % (18 AEs). Finally, multiplexing efficiency showed that capacity degradation is caused mainly by the degradation of AEs efficiency, whereas the impact of low correlation between AEs is found to be an insignificant factor. In addition to the capacity analysis, gain and diversity gain of the maximal ratio combining technique was also investigated.