Hexagonal Shaped Near Zero Index (NZI) Metamaterial Based MIMO Antenna for Millimeter-Wave Application

A single-layered multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna working at 28 GHz loaded with a compact planar-patterned metamaterial (MTM) structures is presented in this paper for millimeter-wave application. A combination of a split square and hexagonal shaped unit cell is designed and investigated with a wide range of effective near-zero index (NZI) of permeability and permittivity, along with a refractive index (NZRI) property. The metamaterial characteristics were examined through the material wave propagation in two main directions at y and x-axis. For wave propagation at the y-axis, it demonstrates mu-near-zero (MNZ) with more than 6 GHz bandwidth, near-zero refractive index (NZRI), and epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) properties. However, it indicates a wide negative range of single mu metamaterial (MNG) from 27.6 to 28.9 GHz frequency span at x-axis wave propagation. A single antenna with 3 × 3 metamaterial unit cells is proposed to operate at a frequency band (24 - 30) GHz. Furthermore, MIMO antenna with only 4 mm space between antenna elements provides high isolation of more than 24 dB. The measured results show that the MIMO antenna is satisfied with 6 GHz bandwidth, and maximum peak gain of 12.4 dBi. In addition to that, the proposed MIMO antenna loaded with MTM has also shown good performances with high diversity gain (DG > 9.99), envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) lower than 0.0013, channel capacity loss (CCL) <; 0.42, total active reflection coefficient (TARC) <; -7 dB, total efficiencies of higher than 98%, with an overall antenna size of 52 mm × 23 mm.