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 indoor in the 902-928 M Hz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band. Of particular interest i s the effect of the operator tissue on the diversity operation. Key indicat ors of diversity gain such as branch mean effective gain (MEG) and envelope correlation coefficient are obtained from finite-difference time-domain (F DTD) method simulations as well as from experimental measurements in three different indoor environments, Diversity gain for the handsets is also meas ured directly. Reasonable agreement is observed between the experimental an d 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.