A Highly Integrated MIMO Antenna UnitA Highly Integrated MIMO Antenna Unit A: Differential/Common Mode Design

Abstract—A novel concept of antenna design, termed as differential/common mode (DM/CM) design, is proposed to achieve highly integrated multi-input multi-output (MIMO) antenna unit in mobile terminals. The inspiration comes from a dipole fed by a differential line which can be considered as a differential mode (DM) feed. What will happen if the DM feed is transformed into a common mode (CM) feed? Some interesting features are found in this research. By symmetrically placing one DM antenna and one CM antenna together, a DM/CM antenna can be achieved. Benefitting from the coupling cancellation of anti-phase currents and the different distributions of the radiation currents, a DM/CM antenna can obtain high isolation and complementary patterns, even if the radiators of the DM and CM antennas are overlapped. Therefore, good MIMO performance can be realized in a very compact volume. To validate the concept, a miniaturized DM/CM antenna unit is designed for mobile phones. 24.2 dB isolation and complementary patterns are achieved in the dimension of 0.330λ0×0.058λ0×0.019λ0 at 3.5 GHz. One 8×8 MIMO antenna array is constructed by using four DM/CM antenna units and shows good overall performance. The proposed concept of DM/CM design may also be promising for other applications that need high isolation between closely-packed antenna elements and wide-angle pattern coverage.