In this letter, a multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with wideband performance for 5G smartphones is presented. First, a planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) with an inverted-T-shaped open-slot is introduced. The proposed PIFA operates with a wide bandwidth of 78% due to the multimode technology. Then, two such PIFAs are attempted to be merged as a PIFA-pair, constituting a 2 × 2 sub-MIMO antenna with a similar bandwidth as the PIFA-element. Additionally, the isolation between two PIFA-elements in a PIFA-pair is higher than 10 dB across the broadband. Finally, a 4 × 4 MIMO antenna, which is composed of two PIFA-pairs, is demonstrated to cover the 5G NR frequency bands: n77/n78/n79 and LTE band 46. The simulated and measured results are included for illustrating the performance of the proposed MIMO antenna.

In this paper, we presented an ultra-wideband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system with high element-isolation for the application in 5G metal-frame smartphones. We proposed T-shaped and C-shaped slots on the metal frame generating four resonances to enhance the bandwidth. What’s more, we introduce modified H-shaped slots between each antenna-element to improve the element-isolation of MIMO antenna system. As a result, the MIMO antenna system has a wide bandwidth of 58% ranging from 3.3 to 6 GHz and the element-isolation is over 18 dB crossing the effective frequency band. Thanks to the decent element-isolation, the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) between each antenna-element is below 0.05 providing a reliable anti-interference for the MIMO antenna system. In addition, the measured radiation efficiencies of the MIMO antenna system are higher than 40%. At last, we analyze the effects caused by user’s hands and head to guarantee the robustness of the MIMO antenna system in practical applications.

In the 5G intelligent edge scenario, more and more accelerator-based single-board computers (SBCs) with low power consumption and high performance are being used as edge devices to run the inferencing part of the artificial intelligence (AI) model to deploy intelligent applications. In this paper, we investigate the inference workflow and performance of the You Only Look Once (YOLO) network, which is the most popular object detection model, in three different accelerator-based SBCs, which are NVIDIA Jetson Nano, NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX and Raspberry Pi 4B (RPi) with Intel Neural Compute Stick2 (NCS2). Different video contents with different input resize windows are detected and benchmarked by using four different versions of the YOLO model across the above three SBCs. By comparing the inference performance of the three SBCs, the performance of RPi + NCS2 is more friendly to lightweight models. For example, the FPS of detected videos from RPi + NCS2 running YOLOv3-tiny is 7.6 times higher than that of YOLOv3. However, in terms of detection accuracy, we found that in the process of realizing edge intelligence, how to better adapt a AI model to run on RPi + NCS2 is much more complex than the process of Jetson devices. The analysis results indicate that Jetson Nano is a trade-off SBCs in terms of performance and cost; it achieves up to 15 FPSs of detected videos when running YOLOv4-tiny, and this result can be further increased by using TensorRT.

Wideband differentially-fed patch antennas under dual high-order modes for stable high gain are proposed in this communication. The working principle is verified on a differentially-fed circular patch antenna operating in TM31 and TM12 modes at first. Two open slots are loaded to the patch’s edge to reconstruct the current distribution of TM31 mode, thus substantially increasing the broadside radiation. An additional slot is introduced at the patch center to perturb the TM12 mode and reshape its current to be more in-phase, by which sidelobe radiation is dramatically reduced. With use of loading of slots and shorting pins, the two modes are allocated in resonant frequencies to make up an enhanced bandwidth of 13.4% and produce high gain up to 13.7 dBi, with the beamwidth and gain level nearly unchanged in band. After that, the proposed method is further developed on a rectangular patch antenna, where three cascaded slots and four shorting pins are loaded to perturb TM21 and TM03 modes, and reshape their current distributions. In a similar way, the broadside radiation of TM21 mode is enhanced and the sidelobe of TM03 mode is suppressed. At last, the antenna obtains a bandwidth of 12.4% and stable realized gain as high as 14.0 dBi.

!In this paper, 4×4 / 8×8 / 10×10 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna systems composed of co-located self-neutralized antenna pairs are proposed to operate at 4.8-5.0 GHz (part of N77 band) for the fifth-generation (5G) communication applications. The proposed antenna pairs consist of a loop antenna and a monopole antenna, co-locating together with a compact size of 6.7×15.5×3.08 mm3. Meanwhile, the co-located design can miniaturize 50% of the antenna size, which is quite significant for practical mobile applications with limited space environment. In addition, the adoption of the self-neutralization technique between the co-located loop antenna and the monopole antenna contributes to a satisfactory isolation with better than 25 / 20 / 16.5 dB for the 4×4 / 8×8 / 10×10 MIMO systems respectively. Analysis of the isolation improvement is also discussed in this study. Moreover, the antenna pairs are able to generate complementary radiation patterns, enabling the envelope correlation coefficients (ECC) between the antennas to be less than 0.1. Also, efficiencies of the MIMO antenna system achieve up to 60% as there is no external decoupling structure deteriorating the radiation performance of the proposed antenna pairs. Finally, a 4×4 MIMO antenna system prototype is fabricated and measured to verify its prospect for 5G MIMO applications.

This letter introduces a frequency-reconfigurable dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with a water layer integration. The proposed method is based on the strategy-combination of mode reconfiguration and dielectric loading. Firstly, the frequency band of the DRA is reconfigured between the resonant frequencies of the fundamental $TE^\rm{y}_{111}$ and quasi- $TE^\rm{y}_{111}$ modes by flowing liquid control of water pumping in and out of the microfluidic cavity. Then, the frequency response of quasi- $TE^\rm{y}_{111}$ mode is continuously swept by altering the thickness of water layer. For demonstration, the DRA is designed with a solid dielectric material of K9 glass with the permittivity of 6.25 and loaded with a layer of fresh water with the permittivity of 77. Finally, the proposed antenna is fabricated and measured, which performs with a wideband reconfigurability and stable far-field performance corresponding to the different frequency responses.