2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP)

Investigation of Multi-Beam Multi-Port MIMO

Antennas for WLAN/WiMAX Applications
Yan Pan, Yuehui Cui, and RongLin Li*
School of Electronic and Information Engineering
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
Email: lirl@scut.edu.cn*

AbstractDual-polarized triple-band multi-beam multiple structure has the advantage of incorporating two ports into
input multiple output (MIMO) antennas are developed for limited space while keeping the isolation high, which is
WLAN/WiMAX access points. A four-beam MIMO antenna promising for developing high performance multiple
and a thirty-two-port four-beam MIMO antenna are
antenna systems. Finally, all the multi-port antennas
investigated for high-capacity and wide-coverage wireless
applications in high-density environment. mentioned above are operating in one single band or two
bands, which lags behind the rapidly growing wireless
Index TermsMIMO antenna, dual-polarized antenna, communication standards.
multiband antenna, multi-beam antenna.
In this paper a four-beam MIMO antenna and a thirty-
two-port four-beam MIMO antenna are developed based on
I. INTRODUCTION the dual polarized antenna elements for high-capacity, wide-
With the substantial development of wireless coverage wireless applications, especially in high-density
applications, such as WLAN and/or WiMAX, multiple input environments.
multiple output (MIMO) antennas have been widely used at
both ends of a communication link. The incorporation of II. FOUR-BEAM MIMO ANTENNA
more MIMO antenna elements with the high gain and
A four-beam dual-polarized MIMO antenna is depicted in
multiband capabilities in wireless access points (APs) is
Fig. 1, which includes four 5-degree tilted sectors to have
essential to achieve the desired wireless performance,
coverage of 360 degrees. Note that we adopt a different
especially for high density enterprise environments. Many
coordinate system in this section to make the discussion
multi-element MIMO antennas have been proposed in the
more intuitive. The coverage can be increased by the high
recent years. Four-port MIMO antennas are investigated in
gain antenna for each sector while the coupling between
[1-4], which implement four antenna elements at the four
different sectors is suppressed. Each of the four dual-
corners of a square to minimize the mutual coupling and
polarized antennas can be assigned a different channel to
overall dimensions. As the number of antenna elements
operating as a two-port MIMO antenna and communicate
increases, however, it becomes difficult to maintain the high
with different clients, thus implements space-division
isolation, especially with compact and simple structure. A
multiple access (SDMA). A prototype of the four-beam
six-port MIMO antenna operating at WLAN 5-GHz band is
dual-polarized MIMO antenna is displayed in Fig. 2. The
developed in [5]. The MIMO antenna consists of three
measured S-parameters are plotted in Fig. 3.
vertically polarized and three horizontally polarized
directional antenna elements, which are alternately mounted Z
towards six different directions. A twelve-port dual-band Y
X
dual-polarized MIMO antenna for WLAN applications is
demonstrated in [6], which uses the same technique of
placing vertically and horizontally polarized antenna
elements alternately to decrease the coupling among the 12
ports. An eighteen-port antenna operating at WLAN 2.4-
GHz is proposed in [7], in which a three-port tri-polarization
antenna is incorporated on each of the six faces of a cube. A
twenty-four-port antenna and a thirty-six-port antenna are
presented in [8], which densely pack individual single-band
antenna elements onto a cube. These multiple polarized
antennas were all implemented relying on complicated 5

structures, including multilayer and interlaced substrate. On Tilted angle

the other hand, different types of 90 and 45 dual linear

polarized antennas have been researched and applied to base
stations. In [9] and [10] two wide band planar dual-
Fig. 9. Configuration of the four-beam MIMO antenna.
polarized antennas are studied. The dual linear polarized

978-88-907018-7-0/17/$31.00 2017 IEEE 2139 #1570312905

 2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP)

z y


x (dB)
(dBm)
500 -50

-55

0 -60

-65

-500 -70
-500 0 500
(m)
(a)

(dB) (dBm)
400 -50

-55

Fig. 2. A prototype of the four-beam MIMO antenna.

0 -60

0
-65

-400 -70
-400 0 400
(m)
2.41 2.51 3.39 3.67 5.01 5.93 (b)

-10
S-parameter (dB)

(dB) (dBm)
250 -50
S11
S22 -55

S12
-20 0 -60

-65

-30
2 3 4 5
Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 3. Measured S-parameter of the four-beam MIMO antenna.
The radiation patterns of the four-beam dual-polarized
MIMO antenna are simulated using Ansoft HFSS V13, as
demonstrated in Fig. 4. It is found that the high gain is
achieved by the combination of the concentrated power
facing different directions. To evaluate the coverage, the
received power Pr is calculated from the transmitted power
Pt, the gain of the transmitting and receiving antennas Gt
and Gr, wavelength in free space , and the distance
between the transmitting and receiving antennas R, as
expressed by Friis transmission equation:
Pr = Pt + Gt + Gr + 20 log10 (
4 R
-250 -70
-250 0 250
(c) (m)
6
Fig. 4. Simulated radiation patterns and coverages of the four-beam MIMO
antenna at (a) 2.45 GHz, (b) 3.5 GHz, and (c) 5.5 GHz.
According to 802.11h standard, the maximum conducted
transmitting power may not exceed 24 dBm (250 mW).
Considering the 22 MIMO configuration, we adopt 20
dBm (100 mW) as the transmitted power for each port.
Assuming that the four-beam MIMO antenna is mounted on
a 10-meter-high ceiling with no obstacles and the gain of the
receiving antenna is assumed to be 0 dBi, we can obtain the
received power Pr using (1) in the area of a square, as
plotted in the right column of Fig. 4. Take the 802.11ac
protocol as example, the receiver supports the minimum
power sensitivity ranging from -82 dBm to -49 dBm for
different operating modes, wherein -70 dBm received power
is sufficient for an 86.7 Mbps physical layer (PHY) data rate
(1) in a two-stream 20 MHz channel, 16-QAM modulation with
)
3/4 coding rate. We can see that the received power is
greater than -70 dBm in a square of 1000 m 1000 m at the
lower band (2.45 GHz), 800 m 800 m at the middle band
(3.5 GHz), and 500 m 500 m at the higher band (5.5
GHz). The coverage of the four-beam MIMO antenna is
dependent on the tilted angle of each reflector, as
demonstrated in Fig. 5. For a maximum coverage at all
frequency bands, we choose the tilted angle to be 5 degrees.

2140 #1570312905
 2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP)

1000000 0
S11 S12
S22 S13
S14
800000
2.45 GHz S15
3.5 GHz S16
-10
Covered area (m2)

S24

S-parameter (dB)
5.5 GHz
600000
S26

400000

-20
200000

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
-30
Tilted angle () 2 3 4 5 6
Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 5. Down tilt angle optimization of the four-beam MIMO antenna.
Fig. 7. Simulated S-parameter of the thirty-two-port MIMO antenna.

III. THIRTY-TWO-PORT FOUR-BEAM MIMO ANTENNA For a good MIMO performance, the correlation between
the antenna ports is required to be low. The correlation
To combine the performance of both high capacity and coefficients between each pair of the eight ports of a single
long range coverage capabilities, a thirty-two-port four- beam are plotted in Fig. 8, which are calculated from the
beam MIMO antenna is studied in this section. The scatter parameters using the expression [11]:
configuration of the antenna is shown in Fig. 6.
2
Z Sii* Sij + S *ji S jj
= s
(2)
(1 S )(1 S )
Y eij 2 2 2
2
X
ii S ji jj Sij

<<0.5 is generally expected to guarantee efficient MIMO

operations in terms of high capacity gain and/or high
diversity gain.
4 1
0.10
3
6 2 12

5 0.08 13
14
Correlation coefficient

Tilted angle
5 15
0.06
16
24
0.04
26
Fig. 6. Configuration of the thirty-two-port four-beam MIMO antenna.
0.02
The thirty-two-port antenna consists of four directional
88 MIMO antennas facing the four different directions to
0.00
provide sufficient multiple antenna capability for the 360- 2 3 4 5 6
degree area. The tilted angle is 5 and the distance between Frequency (GHz)
the two adjacent antenna units is 63.6 mm, which are the
same as before. The simulated S-parameters are plotted in Fig. 8. The correlation coefficients of the thirty-two-port antenna.
Fig. 7, showing that the two bands of WLAN and WiMAX We can see that even the highest correlation coefficient
3.5-GHz band are covered with 10-dB return loss and the (between the parallel adjacent ports) is still negligibly low.
isolation are all better than 15 dB, as expected. The Considering the case when multiple antennas are purely
radiation patterns and gain result are similar to the eight-port used for gaining capacity in a correlated Rayleigh-fading
MIMO antenna in section III so are omitted here. channel, the upper bound of capacity can be calculated as
[12]:

2141 #1570312905

k ACKNOWLEDGMENT
m k !
t
Ct ,r log 2 1 i1 < i2 << ik t
k = 0
1 j1 < j
2 << jk
where T and R are the correlation matrices of the
transmitting and receiving antennas respectively, t and r are
the number of transmitting and receiving antennas
respectively, m=min(t,r). denotes the signal to noise ratio
(SNR) of the channel. When noise floor is assumed as -85
dBm, which is the empirical value for ISM bands [13], the
channel capacities of the dual-polarized antenna and the 88
MIMO antenna for different receiving power at the three
center operating frequencies are plotted in Fig. 9. To
consider the uplink and downlink performance at the same
time, it is also assumed that the proposed antennas are
incorporated for both transmitter and receiver. As a
reference, we also plot the capacity of the case when the
correlation coefficient between every pair of antenna units is
the uniform 0.5, i.e., T and R are the same constant
correlation matrix (0.5), as defined in [12]. It is shown that
the capacity for independent and identically distributed
(i.i.d.) channels and the proposed antennas are consistent for
all the three bands, due to the very low correlation. It is also
obvious that the capacity increases almost linearly with the
number of the antenna units in the MIMO system,
regardless of the operating band.
100
i.i.d.
T = R = (0.5)
80
Channel Capacity (bits/Hz/s)
2.45 GHz
3.5 GHz
5.5 GHz
60
40
20
0 [13]
-70 -65
Receiving Power (dBm)
Fig. 9. Channel capacities of the dual-polarized antenna and the 88 MIMO
antenna for different receiving power at three operating frequencies.
IV.
A four-beam MIMO antenna for wide coverages and a
thirty-two-port four-beam MIMO antenna for high density
environments are investigated. The dual-polarized triple-
band multi-beam MIMO antennas are suitable for
developing different forms of multiport antennas which can
find wide applications in modern multifunctional high-end
WLAN/ WiMAX access points.
2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP)
(
det T ii11 ,,ii22 ,,,,iikk ) (3) The work is supported in part in part by the GDSTC
under Grant 2016A010101008 and in part by the GSTIC
( )
det R jj11 ,, jj22 ,,, jk
, jk under Grant 201607010361.
r
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CONCLUSION
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