Reconfigurable orthogonal quad-port MIMO antenna for DSRC, WLAN, RADAR and Ku-band applications

Abstract

A novel and compact reconfigurable quad-port orthogonal Multi-Input-Multi-Output (MIMO) antenna is proposed for Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC), WLAN, RADAR and Ku-band applications. The proposed MIMO antenna is fabricated on FR-4 substrate of dimensions 40 × 40 × 0.8 mm3. Each element of MIMO antenna has attained different Ku-band frequencies and lower frequency operating band 5.5–9.2 GHz suitable for DSRC, WLAN and RADAR applications is obtained by M-3 element of proposed MIMO antenna for diode ON condition in ground plane. Individual MIMO element is investigated with respect to S-parameters, isolation, current distribution, radiation pattern, gain, radiation efficiency, Total Active Reflection Coefficient (TARC) and diversity performance parameters like Envelope Correlation Coefficient (ECC), Diversity Gain (DG) and Mean Effective Gain (MEG). Overall gain of MIMO antenna ranges between 3.36 and 7.57 dB in operating bands and radiation efficiency ranges between 70.4 and 89.7%. Time domain characteristics are analyzed using group delay with respect to all ports and group delay is less than 1.5 ns. ECC values are below 0.05, DG is very close to 10 and MEGi < −3 dB. The proposed quad-port MIMO antenna exhibits good diversity performance and is validated by comparing computer generated and experimental results.