A low profile circularly polarized metasurface-based ultra-wideband 4x4 MIMO antenna for 5G NR band FR2 frequencies

Abstract

This article presents a polarization conversion metasurface-based low-profile ultra-wideband circularly polarized (CP) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with high performance that is specifically designed for operating in 5G New Radio (NR) bands in frequency range 2 (FR2). For these frequency bands, the 4-port MIMO antenna is being proposed for the first time and is capable of being operated in all of the newly created radio frequency bands in the 5G FR2 region. The main advantage of the proposed configuration is that it requires no isolation/decoupling circuit and the antenna elements are placed orthogonal to their adjacent elements. The 4x4 MIMO antenna offers a good impedance bandwidth of 111.09 % ranging from (12.87–45.02) GHz below − 10 dB reflection coefficient with a minimum isolation of –23.77 dB and maximum isolation of −52.53 dB. The maximum peak realized gain of the 4x4 MIMO antenna without metasurface is 8.14 dBi in the operating band. An improvement of 47 % in the peak realized gain was observed after stacking the metasurface on top of the radiating patch. The proposed antenna produces a circular polarization (CP) in the desired operating band. The 3-dB axial ratio impedance bandwidth for the lower band in millimeter wave (mm-Wave) is 14.13 % ranging from (23.22 – 26.75 GHz) and for the upper band is 7.92 % ranging from (40.82 – 44.19 GHz). Initially, the proposed antenna is designed for a single element and it is extended for a 4-element MIMO with added 4x4 metasurface unit cells for improvement of gain and polarization conversion. The simulated and measured results are in good agreement. In addition to that, the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), channel capacity loss (CCL), total active reflection coefficient (TARC), mean effective gain (MEG), and diversity gain (DG) are calculated and simulated for the proposed four-element MIMO antenna. The designed metsurface-based circularly polarized MIMO antenna covers all 5G new radio frequency bands in FR2 and hence the designed antenna is applicable for 5G NR band FR2 in mm-Wave communications.