MIMO antenna H-plane isolation enhancement using UC-EBG structure and metal line strip for WLAN applications

Abstract

This paper presents design of novel uniplanar compact Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) structure and its application in enhancement of isolation in H-Plane of MIMO antenna system for WLAN (5.8 GHz). Isolation enhancement or coupling reduction of 5.6 dB is achieved by etching out the proposed EBG structure from the ground plane of microstrip patch MIMO antenna. Center to center distance is reduced to 0.45λ0 due to compactness of EBG. A metal line strip between radiating patches is used for further reduction in mutual coupling at 5.8 GHz. There is significant enhancement of 16.2 dB in isolation due to the introduction of metal line strip. Hence the total 21.8 dB reduction in mutual coupling is achieved and this coupling reduction is also verified by surface current plots and measured result. The envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) is less than 0.01 and channel capacity loss (CCL) is less than 0.1 bps/Hz at operating frequency.