Mahesh C. Bhad^1,, Veeresh G. Kasabegoudar², Madhuri P. Rodge¹

This article addresses the design and optimization of electrically small antenna suitable for MIMO (multiple input multiple output) applications. A MIMO transmission is one of the promising antenna technologies used for wireless communication. When the transceiver uses more than one antenna, the antennas must be placed at least half of the carrier wavelength apart, in order to transmit/receive uncorrelated signals. Such antenna systems are required to fit within the hand-held (mobile) terminal which occupies a small size (typically not more than 60x100 mm²). Since antenna integration and miniaturization are two major challenges in MIMO systems, we propose a slot loaded electrically small rectangular patch antenna that operates in the 0.8GHz to 2.6GHz band which is suitable for most of the commercial wireless applications. The proposed antenna has an operating frequency of 1.7GHz with impedance bandwidth of 105%, and the total size of 20x40 mm². Measured results agree with the simulated values.

MIMO, microstrip antennas, long term evolution (LTE), wideband antennas