Mutual coupling suppression of MIMO array with non-uniform curved-strip EBG structure via shape and layout co-optimization

Abstract

In this paper, a shape and layout co-optimization method for mutual coupling suppression of MIMO array with non-uniform curved-strip electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure is proposed. The curved shape of the EBG structure between the microstrip patches is described to achieve the mutual coupling suppression by the spline curve and moving it the same displacement along the y-axis in both directions, where the spline curve is formed by the coordinates of the control points corresponding to the Bessel function. Moreover, the non-uniform layout design of the EBG structure is introduced to further adjust the radiation field and the surface current distribution of the coupled array. Through simultaneously optimizing the curved shape and layout parameters of the strip EBG structure, the expected array radiation and decoupling performances are obtained. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by a MIMO array with edge-to-edge distance of only 0.1λ0 in the 5G WLAN frequency band. The simulation and experiment results indicate that, compared with non-EBG and the initial uniform strip EBG, the proposed EBG structure can provide the advantage of significantly reducing the mutual coupling to −35.20 dB and effectively improving the isolation between the elements, meanwhile ensuring the MIMO array performances.