The influence of MIMO terminal user's hand on channel capacity

In this paper the impact of user's hand holding a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) terminal on the system performance is investigated. A 4times4 MIMO system is considered with a personal digital assistant (PDA) terminal equipped with a compact array of 4 patch elements. The radiation patterns of the antenna elements are simulated in the presence of the other elements and in the presence of a user's hand. The obtained patterns are used to evaluate the covariance matrix of the receive antenna which is incorporated in a correlation-based MIMO channel model. MIMO channel capacity is calculated to demonstrate the capacity degradation caused by the user's hand.