Coupling reduction of closely packed antennas by stringing EBG structure

A stringing Electromagnetic ban-gap (S-EBG) structure is proposed in this paper for coupling reduction of microstrip antenna array. The The S-EBG is constructed by interlinking three mushroom-type EBG in a line with a strip. While in the antenna element assembling direction, it is only one period and maintains a compact array. The structure is easy fabrication, assembling and no etching in the ground plane. A reference microstrip antenna array (RMAA), one conventional mushroom-type (CMT-EBG) element loaded microstrip antenna array (O-CMT-EBG-LMAA), and three CMT-EBG elements loaded microstrip antenna array (T-CMT-EBG-LMAA) were also studied. Research found over 20 dB coupling reduction is achieved by the S-EBG. Thus, the proposed S-EBG is good candidate for array coupling reduction.