Investigation of compensating the ground plane effect through array´s inter-element coupling

Bandwidth and directivity are coupled and an increase in directivity provided by a ground plane tends to reduce bandwidth. Over the last decade it has been indicated that highly coupled antenna elements have the ability to provide wide band properties. Such structures often suffer from a bandwidth reduction when they are placed over a ground plane. This study focuses on the interaction between the ground plane and the inter-element coupling. The coupling can partially be modified and hence it can be seen as an extra degree of freedom, a mean to widen bandwidth for strongly coupled arrays in the presence of a ground plane.