A 3-Port Antenna for MIMO applications

As well known, the capacity of a radio frequency channel can be enlarged by multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna system. By using identical antennas with the same orientation, a certain antenna distance must be respected for achieving the full MIMO gain. On mobile terminals, usually only a limited surface area for antennas is available. Therefore multiport antennas with small dimensions are requested, which offer sufficient decoupling between the ports. The present paper describes a 3-port antenna, operating at 5.6 GHz, which can be used e.g. for MIMO-WLAN applications. The design is outlined and simulated and measured results are given.