Small dual band modified meander antenna with multiple elements

Two prototype antennas were designed for the use of MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) wireless LAN technology for a PC card size application and its performance is evaluated and presented in this report. Two types of antennas are designed; antenna with 2 elements and with 4 elements in the area of 12 × 45mm. The shape of the element is based on the conventional meander type dual band antenna and modified to suit the small area. The performance measurement data showed that the correlation coefficient for the 2 element antenna is 0.38 and those of 4 elements are between 0.13 and 0.93. With the 2GHz band MIMO throughput measurement with the 2 element antenna showed 41 Mbit/s with 23 Mbit/s for normal 1 to 1 connection. It was shown that the two element MIMO antenna can be realized even in a small area which can be used for PC card and this design can also be applicable for a mobile system as embedded antenna. Further investigation would be expected for 5GHz band and 4 element MIMO antenna.