A systematic investigation of four ports MIMO antenna depending on flexible material for UWB networks

A flexible quad-port MIMO antenna with good isolation features with both flat and bending configurations is presented and investigated in this work. The single unit of the MIMO is composed of a crescent-shaped monopole antenna connected with a curved coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed to enhance the operating bandwidth. A thin and flexible Roger 3003 material with thickness = 0.13 mm, εr = 3, and tan δ = 0.001 is used. To improve the isolation between ports which in turn improves the performance of the MIMO system, the single unit antenna is repeated four times and placed orthogonal to each other. A 54 mm × 54 mm × 0.13 mm (0.63λo × 0.63λo × 0.0015λo @ 3.5 GHz) is the total size of the quad ports MIMO antenna. The flexible MIMO antennas in both flat and bending layouts are simulated, tested and the outcomes achieved S₁₁ < - 10 dB from 3.5 GHz up to 11 GHz with mutual coupling ≤ - 17 dB between ports. The radiation patterns of the MIMO antenna are tested with 5 dB peak gain and with semi-omnidirectional and bidirectional patterns in both two planes. The Diversity Gain (DG) values ≥ 9.9 dB through the designed working band, Envelop Correlation Coefficient (ECC) lower than 0.03 from 3.5 GHz to 4 GHz and lower than 0.01 from 4 to 11 GHz, and Channel Capacity Loss (CCL) value ≤ 0.5 bit/s/Hz over the worked band are calculated and extracted in flat and bending configurations and achieved suitable values which support the suggested antenna in the UWB flexible networks.