Effect of Antenna Coupling on the SNR Improvement of Mm-Wave Massive MIMO for 5G

In this paper, it is shown that an optimum coupling between massive MIMO elements improves the SNR for each user in 5G downlink mode. It is assumed that a massive MIMO base station with 64 compact antennas with sub-wavelength spacing (0.37λ) serves 8 user equipments. With proper design of antennas couplings, the mean received SNR of users improves from 4 to 7 dB. Different coupling values are implemented for a sample patch antenna at 28 GHz with a slot on substrate between adjacent patch elements to control the element coupling. The whole system is simulated in MATLAB, with 5G millimeter-wave channel characteristics and OFDM modulation.