Isolation Enhancement of a Two-Monopole MIMO Antenna Array with Various Parasitic Elements for Sub-6 GHz Applications

In this paper, a high-isolation multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) microstrip monopole antenna array is investigated. To reduce the mutual coupling between antenna elements, a novel composite parasitic element constituted by a T-shaped ground branch and an isolated branch was designed and analyzed. The proposed composite parasitic element is capable of generating a unique three-dimensional weak electric field, which can effectively suppress the mutual coupling between the antenna elements. To give an intuitive illustration about the design principle and decoupling strategy of the proposed antenna, the antenna design procedure was ingeniously divided into four steps, and three types of decoupling structures during the antenna evolution were meticulously analyzed at both the theoretical and the physical level. To validate the proposed decoupling concept, the antenna prototype was fabricated, measured, and evaluated. The reflection coefficient, transmission coefficient, radiation pattern, and antenna gain were studied, and remarkable consistency between the measured and simulated results was observed. The simulations showed that the antenna has a peak gain of 3.5 dBi, a low envelope correlation coefficient (ECC < 0.001), and a high radiation efficiency (radiation efficiency > 0.9). Parameters of the proposed MIMO antenna including electrical dimension, highest isolation level, and 20 dB isolation bandwidth were evaluated. Compared with the previous similar designs, the proposed antenna exhibits attractive features including compressed dimension (0.55λ0 × 0.46λ0), extremely high isolation level (approximately 43 dB), fabulous 20 dB isolation bandwidth (3.11−3.78 GHz, 19.4%), a high diversity gain (DG > 9.99 dB), an appropriate mean effective gain (−3.5 dB < MEG < −3 dB), and low design complexity.