A Compact Four-Channel MIMO 5G Sub-6 GHz/LTE/WLAN/V2X Antenna Design for Modern Vehicles

This article presents a compact vehicle antenna design that supports four-channel MIMO operations for 5G Sub-6, LTE, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications with a total volume of only 152 mm in diameter and 20 mm in height. The proposed antenna system consists of four dielectric-loaded wideband horns, a common top plate, an annular slot, and four shorting pins. It produces four vertically polarized diversity patterns in azimuth and a relatively uniform azimuthal coverage in the selection combining mode. The operating principles and the key design parameters of the proposed antenna are discussed in detail. The measurement VSWR, gain, patterns, and MIMO performance of a fabricated antenna prototype mounted on a 1 m circular ground plane are presented and compared with simulations with good agreements.