A Deployable and Cost-Effective Kirigami Antenna for Sub-6 GHz MIMO Applications

In this work, a low-cost, deployable, integratable, and easy-to-fabricate multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Kirigami antenna is proposed for sub-6 GHz applications. The proposed MIMO antenna is inspired by Kirigami art, which consists of four radiating and parasitic elements. The radiating and parasitic elements are composed of a rectangular stub. These elements are placed in such a way that they can provide polarization diversity. The proposed MIMO antenna is designed and fabricated using a soft printed board material called flexible copper-clad laminate (FCCL). It is observed from the results that the proposed MIMO antenna resonates in the 2.5 GHz frequency band, with a 10 dB reflection coefficient bandwidth of 860 MHz ranging from 2.19 to 3.05 GHz. It is worthwhile to mention that the isolation between adjacent radiating elements is higher than 15 dB. In addition, the peak realized gain of the MIMO antenna is around 11 dBi, and the total efficiency is more than 90% within the band of interest. Moreover, the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) is noted to be less than 0.003, and the channel capacity is ≥17 bps/Hz. To verify the simulated results, a prototype was fabricated, and excellent agreement between the measured and computed results was observed. By observing the performance attributes of the proposed design, it can be said that there are many applications in which this antenna can be adopted. Because of its low profile, it can be used in 5G small-cell mobile MIMO base stations, autonomous light mobility vehicles, and other applications.