Flexible (2 × 1) MIMO antenna with electromagnetic band gap unit cell for WiMAX applications

Abstract

A flexible (2 × 1) multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with an electromagnetic band gap (EBG) unit cell is designed and measured. The proposed MIMO antenna is based on a circular slotted patch antenna to work at 3.5 GHz. An EBG unit cell is used to reduce the effect of the inherent mutual coupling produced between the closely spaced MIMO elements. The results show that the measured mutual coupling has been reduced by -11.6 dB (from -10 dB to -21.6 dB), and the measured realized gain has been increased by 1.074 dBi (from 1.59 dBi to 2.66 dBi). An improvement by 2.4% in the simulated efficiency was also noticed (from 78.7% to 81.1%). The proposed antenna also passed the flexibility test without a noticeable change in the S-parameter at the desired frequency.