UWB aperture coupled circular fractal MIMO antenna with a complementary rectangular spiral defected ground structure (DGS) for 4G/WLAN/radar/satellite/international space station (ISS) communication systems

Abstract

In this article, a dual-port aperture-coupled circular fractal antenna array is designed, developed and tested for its usage in 4G, WLAN, radar, satellite and ISS communication systems, covering C-band, X-band and Ku-band of frequencies. The proposed array is designed on two FR-4 substrates (with overall dimensions of 34 × 68.7 × 3.245 mm³) where the upper and lower substrate consists of circular fractal radiators (2nd order of iteration) and a feed network respectively. The aperture slots in the ground are transformed into complementary rectangular spiral slots with a tree-shaped DGS, to achieve the desired operational band (4.6–16.8 GHz) with improved matching performance. It provides a maximum gain of 4.57 dB (at 6.6 GHz) and high port-to-port isolation (S₂₁ ≤ −19 dB) performance. The implementation of the proposed array in MIMO systems is validated by various diversity parameters like low ECC, high DG, high MEG, low CCL and stable TARC attributes. An acceptable agreement is achieved between the simulated and experimental results.

KEYWORDS:

• Aperture coupled
• circular fractal
• ultra-wideband (UWB)
• multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)
• defected ground structure (DGS)

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Dr. Rajesh Khanna (Professor, TIET) and Mr. Naveen (Research Scholar, TIET) for helping in carrying out the antenna testing procedure at Antenna testing and research laboratory, TIET, Patiala, India.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arashpreet K. Sohi

Arashpreet K. Sohi was born in Patiala (Punjab), India. She received her B.E. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2015 from Chandigarh Group of Colleges, Mohali, India and got her M.E degree in 2017 (specialization in Wireless Communications) from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, India. She is presently pursuing her Ph.D. (Electronics and Communications Engineering) from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology. Her research interests include microstrip patch antennas for wireless communication, microwave imaging for breast cancer diagnosis using microstrip patch antennas, optimization algorithms and fractal antennas. She has four research papers in international journals and conferences and two publications in SCIE journals.

Amanpreet Kaur

Amanpreet Kaur was born in Udhampur (Jammu and Kashmir), India. She received her B.E. in Electronics and Communication Engineering degree from Jammu University in 2004. She got her M.E. degree in 2006 and Ph.D. degree in 2016 (specialization in Microstrip Antennas for Wireless communications) from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, India. Since 2006, she is working as an Assistant professor at the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology. Her research interests include microstrip antennas for wireless communication systems, MIMO antennas and Microwave imaging of human tissues using UWB antennas. She has guided 30 M.E. thesis and has handled projects worth rupees 40 lakhs. She is also a life member of IETE (Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers). She has twenty-two research papers in international journals and conferences and twelve publications in SCIE journals. She is also a member of the editorial board team for the journal entitled ‘Recent Advances in Electrical & Electronic Engineering’. She is also a reviewer of the many SCI journals (Taylor & Francis, IEEE access, Springer, Cambridge and Elsevier).