Quality Analysis of Antenna Reflection Coefficient in Massive MIMO Antenna Array Module

Number of antennas per an antenna module will increase in upcoming 5G millimeter wave (mmW) radio products. The usage of antenna arrays compensates the increased propagation loss of a radio signal at mmW frequencies. The worst performing antenna defines the quality level MIMO antenna module. This paper presents an analysis and a relationship between the variation of the antenna resonance frequency and the reflection coefficient. A probability density function (PDF) of the antenna reflection coefficient at the specification limit is a non-linearly scaled mirrored version of the PDF of the variation of the antenna resonance. We measured the PDF of antenna reflection coefficient from manufactured prototypes and there is a good correlation between the measured and the simulated PDFs.