On diversity performance of two-element coupling element based antenna structure for mobile terminal

In wireless communication systems, multipath interference has a significant impact on system design and performance. Fast fading is caused by the coherent summation of one or more echoes from many reflection points reaching the receive antenna. Antenna diversity can be used to mitigate multipath fading. The main challenge of antenna diversity in practical application is the integration of multiple antennas on a small ground plane. Two-element antenna structure based on coupling element antenna concept for diversity application has been studied in previous work and it has shown to be feasible for low frequency diversity application with stable and low envelope correlation across wide frequency range. The studied structure has been tuned to be operating at 1600 MHz for measurement evaluation purpose. This paper presents an analysis of diversity performance of the structure in terms of efficiencies, envelope correlation, and apparent and effective diversity gains in isotropic (i.e. statistically uniform) propagation channel, using spherical near-field technique in an ideal line-of-sight environment (anechoic chamber) and inside reverberation chamber. The envelope correlation is less than 0.1 and the diversity gain is equal to 10.2 dB at 99% reliability level using selection combining technique across simulation and both measurement methods. The measurement techniques are compared to show how accurately the diversity performance of a mobile terminal antenna can be estimated.