Characterization of automotive MIMO antenna configurations through simulations and measurements

In this paper different MIMO antenna configurations for the upper LTE frequency band at 2.6GHz mounted on a vehicle have been investigated. With the help of a simulation tool - that has been developed during the public funded project KAMMP from the German ministry for education and research (BMBF) - one is able not only to evaluate the raw channel information and calculate the ergodic MIMO channel capacity but also to consider the impact of the physical layer in terms of achieved data throughputs along a certain drive route. For the investigations different spatial and polarization decorrelated automotive antennas have been deployed on a vehicle and have been evaluated. In a different scenario than that simulated some measurements with the same antenna configurations have experimentally shown the dependency between the mounting position of the antennas, the antenna configuration itself and the investigated scenario. These results help to understand the complexity in the design procedure of MIMO LTE antennas for automotive applications.