A Compact Planar MIMO Antenna System of Four Elements With Similar Radiation Characteristics and Isolation Structure

A compact planar multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system of four elements with similar radiation characteristics is proposed for the whole 2.4-GHz WLAN band. It consists of two proximity-coupled fed microstrip square ring patch antennas and two lambda/4 microstrip slot antennas of the same linear polarization. These two types of antennas are printed on different sides of the substrate to reduce mutual coupling. With a novel isolation structure etched on the ground plane of the FR4 substrate, high port isolation (below -25 dB) and good MIMO performance are achieved. The overall lateral size of the MIMO system is only 0.64lambda times 0.48A, and good impedance matching (S11 < 10 dB) is achieved across the operating band for all the antenna elements. Full spherical radiation patterns are measured for the MIMO system, showing similar radiation characteristics, and the gains are above 2.3 dB across the operating band.