Decoupling and matching enhancement of compact two-element array antenna merging with Jerusalem-like coupled parasitic structure

Abstract

An array antenna of two high-coupled patches with an edge-to-edge distance of only $0.02{\lambda }_0$ at 3.45 GHz merged with a Jerusalem-like parasitic structure (JPS) is reported. This JPS is compactly sandwiched between two patches and consists of two strips, horizontal (HS) and vertical (VS). HS perturbs the current distributions and so presents two mechanisms for improving the impedance matching and exciting the new half-mode of quasi TM_1/2,1 in comparison with TM₀₁. Additionally, a broadside pattern is provided with a 10 dB increment in polarization purity and a gain over 5.5 dB. VS with two symmetric vias decreases the mutual coupling extremely and isolation over 49 dB is obtained. Moreover, the theory of the excitation modes, the performance and the parametric studies are presented. Two array antennas are fabricated with and without JPS and their results are compared which prove a 15% increase in total MIMO efficiency and a significant reduction in ECC.

KEYWORDS:

• Array antenna
• decoupling
• isolated antennas
• matching
• microstrip patch antenna
• multi-input multi-output (MIMO)

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Ali Kheirdoost in Iran Telecom. Research Cent. (ITRC) for helping with the measurement, and Dr. Kambiz Afrooz in Shahid Bahonar Uni. of Kerman for his constructive comments in antenna theory.

Disclosure statement

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