16-Antenna array in the smartphone for the 3.5-GHz MIMO operation

A 16-antenna array disposed in the smartphone for the LTE MIMO operation in the 3.5-GHz band (3400 ~ 3600 MHz) is presented. The array is fabricated by disposing four quad-antenna linear (QAL) arrays along two long side edges of the system circuit board of the smartphone. The QAL array has a planar structure occupying a small area of 3 mm × 50 mm. Two QAL arrays spaced 20 mm are disposed along each side edge. Acceptable antenna performances and ECC (envelope correlation coefficient) values are obtained for the antennas in the array. The calculated ergodic channel capacities of the 16-antenna array in a 16 × 16 MIMO system reach about 66 ~ 72 bps/Hz with a 20-dB signal-to-noise ratio. The obtained results of the 16-antenna array are presented.