Design and evaluation of an antenna array for MIMO systems and handset wireless applications

This paper presents a MIMO array platform to operates at 2.6 GHz LTE band for wireless communication systems. The array consists of four compact patch antennas on a dielectric substrate of 125 × 62.5 × 1.27 mm³. Modifications of the ground plane along with systematic placement and orientation of each antennas on top of the substrate plays a key role to reduce the mutual coupling which normally degrades the MIMO arrays performance. The performance of this MIMO array has been evaluated through simulations and measurements of the scattering parameters and radiation patterns. The isolation obtained is over 28 dB between all the antennas, and the maximum achieved gain of a single antenna is 3.1 dBi with other antennas terminated with appropriate loads.