A Novel Dual-Band (38/60 GHz) Patch Antenna for 5G Mobile Handsets

Sensors (Basel). 2020 Apr 29;20(9):2541. doi: 10.3390/s20092541.

Abstract

A compact dual-frequency ( 38 / 60   GHz ) microstrip patch antenna with novel design is proposed for 5G mobile handsets to combine complicated radiation mechanisms for dual-band operation. The proposed antenna is composed of two electromagnetically coupled patches. The first patch is directly fed by a microstrip line and is mainly responsible for radiation in the lower band ( 38   GHz ). The second patch is fed through both capacitive and inductive coupling to the first patch and is mainly responsible for radiation in the upper frequency band ( 60   GHz ). Numerical and experimental results show good performance regarding return loss, bandwidth, radiation patterns, radiation efficiency, and gain. The impedance matching bandwidths achieved in the 38   GHz and 60   GHz bands are about 2   GHz and 3.2   GHz , respectively. The minimum value of the return loss is - 42 dB for the 38   GHz band and - 47 for the 60   GHz band. Radiation patterns are omnidirectional with a balloon-like shape for both bands, which makes the proposed single antenna an excellent candidate for a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system constructed from a number of properly allocated elements for 5G mobile communications with excellent diversity schemes. Numerical comparisons show that the proposed antenna is superior to other published designs.

Keywords: 5G mobile handsets; MIMO; dual-band antenna; microstrip patch antenna; millimeter-wave.