A Novel Low-Profile 5G MIMO Antenna for Vehicular Communication

The proposed work is a novel low-profile 5G MIMO antenna configuration to exhibit dual-band frequencies for 5G NR-n2 band (1.9 GHz) and safety band (ITS-5.9 GHz) in vehicular communication. In the proposed antenna, it is quite difficult to achieve the lowest resonance frequency in a comparatively miniaturized dimension concerning its operating wavelength. The designed antenna is a modified square patch with the dual-band resonance achieved by the incorporation of slots for increasing the electrical length within the dimension. Hence, the design comprises ring and loop slots exhibiting resonance at 1.9 GHz and the loop U, and modified-W slots for 5.9 GHz. The antenna achieves 1.9% and 0.64% impedance bandwidth and a peak gain of 1.944dBi and 6.06dBi at the resonant frequencies of 1.9 GHz and 5.9 GHz, respectively, with dimensions of 0.114λo × 0.114λo × 0.0016λo, where λo is the wavelength of the lowest operating frequency. The MIMO configuration is presented to assess the antenna’s suitability for large-scale applications. The MIMO antenna presented here is deployed with the edge-to-edge distance between the single element radiators being 0.01λo by parametric sweep. The presented MIMO antenna provides an isolation value greater than 19 dB because of reduced mutual coupling between the single element radiators in that MIMO structure due to the presence of a ground slot. The ECC values are 1.659 × 10−9 and 0.000601 for frequencies of 1.9 GHz and 5.9 GHz, respectively, and the diversity gain is relatively near 10 dB, which is the acceptable value for MIMO antennas. This modified square single-element and MIMO antenna provides a relatively higher gain and better performance in vehicular communication for GSM and safety applications. The MIMO configurations’ on-vehicle analysis is performed to check the reliability of the designed antenna in a vehicular environment.