Mutual coupling suppression in closely spaced antennas

A technique to significantly reduce the mutual coupling between closely spaced antennas operating at the same frequency band is presented. The method comprises the use of two ground-plane side walls that are erected vertically next to adjacent antennas. The side walls are defected with a lattice pattern of slots to form a defected wall structure (DWS). In addition, the adjacent antennas sharing a common ground plane are separated with a pair of slits in the ground plane. This technique implemented on closely packed antenna suppresses surface waves in the antenna's operation band and can provide isolation of 56'dB, which was achieved with a DWS loaded with mushroom-shape slots separating two microstrip patch antennas. In this case, the inter-antenna spacing (centre to centre) is 0.272' o and ground-plane size is 0.606 × 0.370 × o 2 . Also investigated is the number of DWS slot loadings on isolation between adjacent antennas. Furthermore, the proposed technique is shown to substantially reduce mutual coupling between planar inverted-F antennas (PIFAs) and monopoles. The measured results validate the proposed technique and vindicate the simulation results.

[1]  Chi Ho Cheng,et al.  Reduction of Mutual Coupling Between Closely-Packed Antenna Elements , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

[2]  Gerard J. Foschini,et al.  Layered space-time architecture for wireless communication in a fading environment when using multi-element antennas , 1996, Bell Labs Technical Journal.

[3]  A. Tavakoli,et al.  A novel low mutual coupling microstrip antenna array design using defected ground structure , 2006 .

[4]  Li Jiang,et al.  Elimination of scan blindness with compact defected ground structures in microstrip phased array , 2009 .

[5]  I. Ederra,et al.  Coupling Reduction Between Dipole Antenna Elements by Using a Planar Meta-Surface , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

[6]  D. Pozar.  Input impedance and mutual coupling of rectangular microstrip antennas , 1982 .

[7]  T. Itoh,et al.  A simple and accurate model for microstrip structures with slotted ground plane , 2004, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[8]  O. Quevedo-Teruel,et al.  Mutual Coupling Reduction in Patch Antenna Arrays by Using a Planar EBG Structure and a Multilayer Dielectric Substrate , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

[9]  Michael A. Jensen,et al.  Experimental characterization of the MIMO wireless channel: data acquisition and analysis , 2003, IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun..

[10]  H. D. Hristov,et al.  Mutual coupling between planar inverted-F antennas , 2004 .

[11]  J. R. James,et al.  Minimising mutual coupling in thick substrate microstrip antenna arrays , 1997 .

[12]  Y. Rahmat-Samii,et al.  Microstrip antennas integrated with electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structures: a low mutual coupling design for array applications , 2003 .

[13]  F. Jolani,et al.  Mutual coupling reduction between two microstrip patch antennas , 2008, 2008 Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering.

[14]  D. Guha,et al.  Concentric Ring-Shaped Defected Ground Structures for Microstrip Applications , 2006, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters.

[15]  Y. Qian,et al.  A design of the low-pass filter using the novel microstrip defected ground structure , 2001 .