Antenna array for 5th generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi applications

In this paper, the design and simulation study of a compact 8-element MIMO antenna system for next generation IEEE 802.11ac Wi-Fi application is presented. The IEEE 802.11ac is an emerging WLAN standard which operates at 5GHz band. The real challenges for IEEE 802.11ac are to meet the recent functional demands and the extensive wireless market growth expected in next 3-5 years. The aim of this research is to propose an antenna design that can operate at 5GHz WLAN band and facilitates the features that conform to 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard requirements. The proposed antenna design consists of eight radiating elements and a gap coupled inset-feed technique is incorporated to achieve better performance by the MIMO antenna array. The dimensions of the patch antenna were calculated using transmission-line model whereas layouts of the single element antenna and the array are simulated on two different platforms i.e. momentum - an EM tool of Agilent's advance design system (ADS) system simulator based on method of moments technique and CST microwave studio which is based on finite difference time domain technique. In the end, the comparative analysis of the antenna simulation results using both the techniques is presented.