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The huge proliferation of the antenna number brought by 5G greatly increases the pressure of the bezels of the 5G terminals. To release the pressure, planar four-antenna module with miniaturization and wideband performance that can be implemented on the back cover is proposed in this article. Four identical dual-mode PIFAs are arranged in a sequentially rotated style and the whole antenna appears in a circular shape. Each antenna element is a slotted quasi-quarter circle with one inner edge shorted and the other two edges left open, and it is coupled fed by an L-shaped microstrip line. A cross line that connects all the four elements together is used to improve the isolation of the neighboring elements. The four-antenna module covering N77 is with the diameter of 30.6 mm and height of 2 mm. The measured results show that for all the four antenna elements, the −6 dB impedance bandwidths cover 3.3–4.2 GHz, all the isolations are better than 9.7 dB, the average total efficiencies are between 36% and 40%, and envelope correlation coefficients (ECCs) are lower than 0.5. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the smallest four-antenna module covering 3.3–4.2 GHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a novel design of the dual-band antenna pair. Starting from the single-band antenna pair composed of T-shaped monopole and T-shaped slot that are intersected with each other, orthogonal T-monopole and odd-symmetrical slot modes are excited. By adding symmetrical low-pass high-stop filters into the horizontal stub of the T-monopole and high-pass low-stop filters into the gap of the T-slot, an extra mode is introduced for each antenna, producing dual-band operation. Impedance bandwidths and radiation efficiencies of both bands can be adjusted flexibly using the filters. A detailed design guideline is given. The dual-band antenna pair operating at partial N78 (p-N78, 3.4~3.6 GHz) and partial N79 (p-N79, 4.8~4.9 GHz) is with a footprint of $15\times 6$ mm2. The measured results show that the average efficiencies are both −3.4 dB at p-N78/p-N79 for the odd-symmetrical slot and −2.8 dB/−3.7 dB at p-N78/p-N79 for the T-monopole, isolations are better than −16.8 dB at p-N78 and −11.8 dB at p-N79, and ECCs are lower than 0.1 at p-N78 and 0.2 at p-N79. The proposed dual-band antenna pair exhibits great potential to be applied in the fifth-generation (5G) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) terminal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a polarization-orthogonal co-frequency dual antenna pair suitable for fifth-generation (5G) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) smartphone with metallic bezels. The proposed spatial-reuse dual antenna pair consists of a split on the metallic bezel and a slot on the mainboard ground, where the slot is centered on the split. Two orthogonal degenerate characteristic modes operating at half wavelength including in-phase current and slot modes can be excited on the same antenna structure. An end-shorted microstrip line that crosses the split is used to excite the in-phase current mode, producing $y$ -polarized radiation, while a symmetrical slot-centered Y-shaped feeding network with its shorted ends crossing the slot is adopted to excite the slot mode, producing $x$ -polarized radiation. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that a co-frequency dual antenna pair suitable for smartphone with metallic bezels is proposed. A sub-6 GHz dual antenna pair operating at 3.5 GHz that occupies a footprint of $25 \times 7 \times 1.5$ mm3 shows a simulated isolation better than −24.1 dB without any external decoupling measures and an envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) lower than 0.008. A four-antenna MIMO array is fabricated and measured to verify the feasibility. Across the operation band, the measured isolation of the antenna pair is better than −20.1 dB and other isolation levels are all better than −12.7 dB, the ECCs of any two antennas are lower than 0.13, and the total efficiency range of the four antennas is 35.2%~64.7%. The proposed dual antenna pair exhibits a great potential to be applied in future 5G MIMO smartphone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]