A compact four element multi-band multi-input multi-output (MIMO) antenna system for 4G/5G and IoT applications is presented in this paper. The proposed antenna is developed using the theory of characteristic modes helping in systematic design of MIMO antenna system. It consists of four L-shaped planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) elements each operating at 3.5, 12.5, and 17 GHz bands with the bandwidth of 359 MHz, 1 GHz, and more than 3.7 GHz, respectively. The proposed antenna system is suitable for both 4G/5G and internet of things devices as it shows the satisfactory MIMO system performance. Good isolation characteristics are observed by implementing complimentary Metamaterial structure on the ground plane resulting in isolation level lower than −21 dB between the antenna elements. The proposed antenna is fabricated and experimental results are also presented and discussed.
K E Y W O R D S5G, IoT, multi-input multi-output, planar inverted-F antenna, theory of characteristic modes