Polarized diversity compact planar mimo antenna for wireless access point applications

Abstract

In this paper, a wideband polarization diversity multi-input multioutput (MIMO) antenna system is proposed. The structure of the proposed antenna consists of four wideband coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed monopole antennas with a common ground plane and radiated element. The simulated and measured -10 dB impedance bandwidth is 20% (2.25-2.75 GHz), which covers WiFi (2.4 GHz) and LTE (2.6GHz) frequency bands. The MIMO antenna system is applied to both an indoor and outdoor wireless access point (WAP) at the covered frequency bands. Due to the common structure of elements in the proposed MIMO antenna, an acceptable mutual coupling between the antennas ports is critical. Hence, a new parasitic element structure is presented to improve mutual coupling between the antenna ports. Acceptable values for the coupling coefficient (< -14 dB) are achieved by adding the parasitic element. The presented antenna system provides a nearly omnidirectional radiation pattern with an orthogonal mode of linear polarization. The results show a polarization diversity gain of 10 dB and an envelope correlation coefficient of less than 0.2. Moreover, each antenna port possesses peak gains of 5.33-6.97 dBi and efficiencies of 51.5-57%. A comparison between the simulation results and experimental measurements reveals good agreement between the two, confirming the validity of the proposed design.