Design and performance investigation of a dual-element PIFA array at 2.5 GHz for MIMO terminal

A study is described of a modified planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) operating in 2.5 GHz band on a printed circuit board (PCB) of a mobile phone handset. The antenna dimension is reduced substantially with a miniature ground plane and capacitive loading. While inheriting the attractive features of PIFAs, such as low profile, easy fabrication and low cost, the proposed antenna exhibits low coupling to the PCB. A dual-element PIFA array is implemented on a mobile handset PCB and the diversity performance of the dual-element PIFA array is evaluated in both simulation and measurement. Index Terms--Diversity gain, multiple input multiple output (MIMO), mutual coupling, planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA).