Design of two element and four element printed dipole array antennas for wireless communication applications

Abstract

In Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system, both transmitter and receiver are provided with more than one antenna to increase the channel capacity and quality. This paper describes the simulated results of microstrip balun fed two and four element printed dipole array antenna using ADS software for wireless communication applications and revealed that the return loss of 4 element side by side array antenna is -24.04 dB at 5.6 GHz. When the spacing between the elements is less than 0.5λ, the effect of mutual coupling is more. The mutual impedance between antenna elements is computed from the measured S parameters and it is below 24 dB for the measured frequency range 4-6.8 GHz. The designed antennas are characterized by measuring return loss, directivity, radiation pattern and gain. Gain and directivity of four element array is 8.85 dBi and it radiates 18.9 mW power. The performance of arrays is evaluated using capacity as the metric based on Monte Carlo realizations of the channel with inclusive of mutual coupling between dipoles. © 2013 Springer.