Over-the-Air Evaluation of the Antenna Performance of Popular Mobile Phones

Mobile terminals have become an integral part of people's everyday life. The ability of the handset to transmit and to receive power determines how good communication link it can establish. This paper presents results from a comprehensive study on the radio performance, in terms of total radiated power (TRP) and total isotropic sensitivity (TIS), of 16 mobile terminals, common in the Nordic countries, in different use scenarios - free space, talk mode using right and left hand phantom next to head phantom, and data mode with right hand phantom. The phones are tested following the standardized non-invasive procedure for 2G, 3G and 4G communication standards. It is found that there is a large spread in the performance among the tested phones even in free space (up to 9 dB for TRP and up to 5 dB for TIS) and the case is more severe when the user is located next to the handset. The results indicate that the vicinity of the user to the mobile terminal can lead to degradation up to 22 dB in the transmit performance and up to 8 dB in the receive performance.