Polarization Selective Partial Reflective Decoupling Layers for Mutual Coupling Reduction of Two Closely Spaced Dual-Polarized Antennas

In this communication, two polarization selective partial reflective decoupling layers (PRDLs) are utilized to mitigate at least two kinds of mutual couplings between two closely spaced dual-polarized dipole antennas. The PRDL is a large-scale model of an actual dielectric board, obtained by arranging a large number of identical conducting obstacles in a regular two-dimensional pattern. The two PRDLs are designed at proper distances from the antenna aperture with well-engineered dielectric constants for two preset polarizations. Each layer is selective to only one polarization by appropriately designing the dimension of the unit cells. Consequently, the two dominant couplings between the two dual-polarized antennas are reduced significantly. The measured isolation between all ports of the two antennas are increased to more than 21 dB, while their reflection coefficients can still maintain in satisfactory status. The radiation patterns, total efficiencies, and envelop correlation coefficients of the proposed antenna, as well as its counterpart without any decoupling measures, are also obtained through measurement, showing significant and reasonable improvements, which further indicates that it has great potential to be extended and applied to 5G MIMO arrays in both base stations and wireless routers.