Diversity performance of dual-antenna handsets near operator tissue

This paper presents a computational and experimental study of the diversity performance of two dual-antenna handsets operating indoors in the 902-928 MHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band. Of particular interest is the effect of the operator tissue on the diversity operation. Key indicators of diversity gain such as branch mean effective gain (MEG) and envelope correlation coefficient are obtained from finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method simulations as well as from experimental measurements in three different indoor environments. Diversity gain for the handsets is also measured directly. Reasonable agreement is observed between the experimental and simulated results, with both approaches indicating that while the tissue lowers the MEG of individual branches by 3-5 dB, it has little influence on the handset overall diversity performance.