| Summary: | Yes === The paper presents a technique to enhance the isolation between adjacent radiating elements which is common in
densely packed antenna arrays. Such antennas provide frequency beam-scanning capability needed in Multiple-Input Multiple-Output
(MIMO) systems and Synthetic Aperture Radars (SARs). The method proposed here uses a metamaterial decoupling slab (MTMDS),
which is located between radiating elements, to suppress mutual-coupling between the elements that would otherwise degrade
the antenna efficiency and performance in both the transmit and receive mode. The proposed MTM-DS consists of mirror imaged Eshaped
slits engraved on a microstrip patch with inductive stub. Measured results confirm over 9–11 GHz with no MTM-DS the
average isolation (S12) is -27 dB; however, with MTM-DS the average isolation improves to -38 dB. With this technique the
separation between the radiating element can be reduced to 0.66λo, where λ0 is free space wavelength at 10 GHz. In addition, with
this technique there is 15% improvement in operating bandwidth. At frequencies of high impedance match of 9.95 GHz and 10.63
GHz the gain is 4.52 dBi and 5.40 dBi, respectively. Furthermore, the technique eliminates poor front-to-back ratio encountered in
other decoupling methods. MTM-DS is also relatively simple to implement. Assuming adequate space is available between adjacent
radiators the MTM-DS can be fixed retrospectively on existing antenna arrays, which makes the proposed method versatile. === Partially supported by innovation programme under grant agreement H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET- 722424 and the financial support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant EP/E022936/1.
|
|---|
