A world-leading 8-antenna/12-antenna array system

  A world-leading 8-antenna/12-antenna array system, promising for use in the future 5G smartphone, was successfully developed by Professors Kin-Lu Wong and Chao-Kai Wen in the massive MIMO antenna system research center (MMASRC) at NSYSU. The throughput of the antenna array in a 12x8 MIMO system was measured to be about 3.8 Gbps with 256-QAM modulation and a 100-MHz bandwidth at 3.5 GHz band. The obtained throughput is 30 times higher than that of today's 4G smartphone.

  “The antenna arrays herein are mainly for receiving signals. With the obtained throughput, it takes the 12-antenna smartphone less than 1 second to download a 3 Gigabit film online, explained Professor Wong, an IEEE fellow and the leader of the MMASRC.

  In conventional antenna theory, the spacing between two antennas is required to be at least 0.5 wavelength to avoid the mutual interference. However, the antenna research team at NSYSU has pushed the frontiers of knowledge forward, successfully reducing the minimum spacing to 0.05 wavelength and allowing multiple antennas to be arranged in a narrow space between the smartphone's screen and frame.

  Professor Wen at the Institute of Communication Engineering at NSYSU led his research team to develop a 12x8 MIMO testbed that can be used for measuring several important performance metrics with very high accuracy. With a real-time analysis of the signal-to-noise ratio, channel capacity, and throughput, this design is proved to be an effective solution.