Capacity enhancement by increasing both mutual coupling and efficiency: a novel approach

In this paper a method which increases both mutual coupling and efficiency is presented. It is based on hardware modification and applied to patch antenna arrays. It is seen that by increasing the mutual coupling, the channel capacity is increased significantly. In addition, this method removes, over a certain frequency band, the main drawback of mutual coupling: the losses at the ports level. The benefits of this method on the channel capacity are analyzed for 3 antenna structures. The channel capacity is calculated using a measurement based tool called MEBAT. The effects of this method are shown both by simulations and measurements.