Antenna Design for Diversity and MIMO Application

Recently, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology and diversity have attracted much attention both in industry and academia due to high data rate and high spectrum efficiency. By increasing the number of antennas at the transmitter and/or the receiver side of the wireless link, the diversity/MIMO techniques can increase wireless channel capacity without the need of additional power or spectrum in rich scattering environments. However, due to limited space of small mobile devices, the correlation coefficients between MIMO antenna elements are usually very high, and the total efficiencies of MIMO elements would be degraded severely due to mutual couplings. In addition, the human body causes high losses on electromagnetic waves. In real applications, the presence of users may result in significant reduction of total antenna efficiencies, and the correlations of MIMO antenna systems are also highly
affected. In this chapter, the performance of some basic MIMO antennas as well as recent technologies toimprove MIMO antenna performance of portable devices and mobile terminals are reviewed. The interactions between MIMO antennas and human body are also addressed particularly in mobile terminals application.