Assessment of mmWave Handset Arrays in the Presence of the User Body

The emergence of mobile terminals operating at millimeter-wave frequencies necessitates the ability to evaluate the effect the environment, and in particular, users have on their radiation properties. Some studies evaluated the shadowing effects of a hand or an entire body for simple antenna configurations. This letter proposes a method for reliably predicting the performance of different array geometries in the presence of the users when they operate the mobile with one or with two hands. In practice, the way a mobile is operated is varying strongly between users, and hence, it is of great interest to draw a methodology to both numerically and experimentally evaluate any handset design in a large number of use cases in a repeatable manner. The use of numerical models and realistic phantoms allow high repeatability when evaluating the terminal radiation under real use conditions. Both the simulated body and the human phantom are used to study the field scattering from the handset arrays subject to the user interaction, yielding consistent results between them. Results suggest that shadowing by the user’s torso usually decreases gain between 20–30 dB close to the region of the user. The user posture largely affects the spherical coverage, particularly for those antennas close to the corners in a two-hand mode.