1

Mutual Coupling Reduction of a (2×1) MIMO Antenna System Using

Parasitic Element Structures for WLAN Applications

By

SAVERI BALAJI 14BEC1018

ASEEM ANJALI SAMEER 14BEC1085
NAVEEN 14BEC1016

A project report submitted to

Prof. Ravi Prakash Dwiwedi

SCHOOL OF ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the course of

ECE411 – RADAR AND NAVIGATIONAL AIDS

in

B.Tech. ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

VIT UNIVERSITY, CHENNAI

Vandalur – Kelambakkam Road

Chennai – 600127
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ABSTRACT

The design and analysis of two elements MIMO antenna for ISM band application is
presented.

A novel parasitic element technique with spacing of 0.048λ between elements is used
and very low correlation and higher isolation values between elements are achieved in
this project. With a single rectangular patch antenna designed to operate at 2.4GHz, a
slot is introduced in the patch to increase its effective length and decrease its area.

The structure has a rectangular shape with square slots had resulting MIMO antenna
which was found to have a low mutual coupling and an envelope correlation coefficient
less than 0.15 in the band of interest. The antenna also has a wide relative
bandwidth, high total efficiency of 89.5% and acceptable realized gain of about 2.25dBi.

MIMO antenna design is presented to decrease the mutual coupling by proposing a

parasitic element with slots of rectangular, circular and hexagonal shapes. Conclusion
and discussion of the obtained results are presented
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We wish to express our sincere thanks and deep sense of gratitude to our project guide,.
Prof.Ravi Prakash Dwivedi, Assistant Professor, School of Electronics Engineering,
for his consistent encouragement and valuable guidance offered to us in a pleasant
manner throughout the course of the project work.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

S NO. TITLE SUBTITLE PAGE NO.

i ABSTRACT 3

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 4

1 INTRODUCTION 6

2 OBJECTIVES AND GOALS

3 DESIGN 7
3.1 MOTIVATION

3.2 METHODOLOGY 8

3.2 COMPARISON 9

4 SOFTWARE HFSS IMPLEMENTATION 10

5 RESULTS & CONCLUSION 14-17

6 REFERENCES 18
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INTRODUCTION

In the last years, wireless communications grew very fast specially for WLAN
communications, due to the different techniques which have been used to increase the
channel capacity by increasing the data rate transform and reduce probability of error.

One of the important techniques used for this purpose is the multiple-input multiple-
output (MIMO) antenna systems, which utilize the advantages of multiplexing gain and
diversity gain

However, these systems have some disadvantages, especially the high mutual coupling
that presents between the MIMO elements. The mutual coupling can be attributed to
two reasons; the electromagnetic interaction of the elements or the surface current
flowing from one element to the other or both.

Mutual coupling affects the MIMO antennas characteristics by degrading the impedance
matching, reducing the efficiency, decreasing the capacity of the channel, increasing the
correlation, increasing the coupling power and reducing the radiated power.

There are several methods to reduce the mutual coupling such as split ring resonator,
Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG), insertion of parasitic element.
Neutralization line method has been used to reduce the mutual coupling for the 2.4GHz
wireless applications.
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2. OBJECTIVES AND GOALS

2.1 Implement the MIMO structure with ground plane optimised for the
frequency response

2.2 Compare the prototypes of multiple MIMO antenna system with and
without parasitic element

2.3 Compare the parasitic elements having different shapes of slots and find the
best performance with the help of envelop correlation factor.
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3. DESIGN

3.1 Motivation

In the last years, wireless communications grew very fast specially for WLAN
communications, due to the different techniques which have been used to increase the
channel capacity by increasing the data rate transform and reduce probability of error.
To obtain redundant data is for once very advantageous to project the data that has
experienced flat multipath fading. The averaging of information can reduce the effect
of change in peak to average power ratio.

A parasitic element structure is used here to reduce the mutual coupling produced in a
compact (2×1) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) antenna system working at 2.4 GHz
for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications.

3.2 Methodology

The project has these requiements:

1. Construction of patch antenna

The design of simple rectangular path antenna

A single rectangular patch is firstly designed to resonate at 2.4GHz

The dielectric substrate is chosen to be FR4 substrate with dielectric constant
εr=4.4, thickness h=1.6mm, and loss tangent tanδ=0.025. The dimensions of
the patch are found as (38 28.32) mm2 using the following design formulas:

1 2
𝑊𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ = √
2𝑓𝑟√𝜖0𝜇0 𝜖𝑟 + 1

1
𝐿𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ = − 2∆𝐿
2𝑓𝑟√𝜖𝑒𝑓𝑓√𝜖0𝜇0

The partial ground technique is chosen here to improve the bandwidth. By

this technique, the capacitance between ground plane and the patch is
decreased and the bandwidth is increased consequently.
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The design of MIMO patch

As discussed in the objective, for the miniaturisation, the dimensions of the

radiating patch are relatively big and inefficient be used for MIMO system in
terms of bandwidth, coupling and spectral efficiency. The size is very critical
parameter. Therefore, a slot is introduced to the radiated patch in order to
increase its effective length. With dimensions (Lg×Wg×h) of (48 48 1.6)
mm3, the width of the partial ground plane was optimised for resonance at
desired frequency.

2. Construction of parasitic element

Parasitic element is an element with certain shape and size inserted between
MIMO elements to reduce the mutual coupling between the MIMO elements.
This parasitic element will create an opposite coupling field on its both sides
so as to reduce the original field, therefore reducing the overall coupling.
Iexcited is referred to as the exciting current feeding to element 1, Icoupling par
denotes the coupling current between the patches and parasitic element, and
Icoupling2is the coupling current between patch elements 1and2. The overall
coupling current Icoupling on the victim antenna can be expressed by

𝐼𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 = (𝛼 + 𝛽 2 )𝐼𝑒𝑥𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑑
Where,
α -> the coupling factor between patch elements 1 and 2
β -> the coupling factor between parasitic element and element1

3. Construction of MIMO antenna with parasitic element

The mentioned requirements were combined that gave the MIMO antenna. In the
results, the effect of coupling
between the 2 antennas is
explicitly shown. This coupling
was then attempted to reduce
using parasitic element as
shown in the adjacent diagram.
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3.3 Comparison - of geometries in parasitic element

The performance of the parasitic element depends on the geometry of the slots in it. The
objectives of inserting the slots are:

1. To find the frequency at which the geometry gives maximum abstinence to

coupling and modifying the geometry to obtain resonant band stop response.
2. To compare the shape of the slots and obtain the results of best coupling
reduction performance.
3. In that context, obtain best envelope correlation coefficient.
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4. SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION

The list of design parameters are given below:

4.1 Dimensions of MIMO antenna:

This the the antenna that is mirrored to obtain a

double port network.

The resonance is maintained at 2.4GHz by using

quarter-wavelength matching transform instead of
original inset feed with dimensions listed in the
tables

4.2 Dimensions of parasitic element:A sample design of parasitic

rectangle with square slots in it :-

In similar manner, the slots were made in hexagonal and

circular shapes.

The shapes of the slots imply the change in effective minimum

acceptable perimeter. Thus, even when the design resonates at
a particular frequency with particular size of slots, the number
of slots used affect the total perimeter covered, which changes
the performance. Therefore, this research takes into
consideration the changes in the loss parameters and current
density profiles depending upon the shape of the slots.
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HFSS IMPLEMENTATION

PARASITIC ELEMENT WITH CIRCULAR SLOTS

PARASITIC ELEMENT WITH SQUARE SLOTS

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PARASITIC ELEMENT WITH HEXAGONAL SLOTS

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5. RESULTS & CONCLUSION

The return loss, transmission loss and current distribution were the points required to
do the comparative study.

Red - With Circle

Blue - With Square

Green - With Hexagon

5.1 Return Loss:

S11

S11
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S11
XY Plot 17 HFSSDesign1 ANSOFT
-2.00 Curve Info
dB(S(1,1))
Setup1 : Sw eep
-4.00

-6.00

-8.00
dB(S(1,1))

-10.00

-12.00

-14.00

-16.00

-18.00
1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00
Freq [GHz]

CONCLUSION: Observing the variation, the square geometry tends to perform better
here. The hindrance in operation of MIMO antenna due to parasitic element is least for
square geometry of parasitic slots.

5.2 Transmission Loss

S21

S21
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S21
XY Plot 18 HFSSDesign1 ANSOFT
-5.00 Curve Info
dB(S(2,1))
Setup1 : Sw eep
-10.00

-15.00

-20.00
dB(S(2,1))

-25.00

-30.00

-35.00

-40.00
1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00
Freq [GHz]

CONCLUSION: The coupling is reduced more in case of square slots.

5.3 Current Distribution

Without the parasitic element, the

current distribution is 

The highlighted with red circle shows

the coupling in the right antenna due
to radiation by left antenna.

The same structure using different slots in the parasitic element is as shown 

5.3.1 Square geometry

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5.3.2 Circular geometry

5.3.3 Hexagonal geometry

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CONCLUSION: The circular slot structure seems to block higher magnitude currents
more effectively than square and circular slot structure.

5.4 Envelope correlation factor:

Geometry Circular Square Hexagonal

Value 0.12576 0.12697 0.1301

CONCLUSION:

The performance of the square geometry is better than other geometries of slots in
the parasitic element.
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6. REFERENCES

[1] Vol. 6, No. 11, November 2015 ISSN 2079-8407

Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

[2] H. Nigam, M. Kumar, "A Compact MIMO Antenna Design for 2.4 GHz ISM Band
Frequency Applications", International Journal of Electronics and Computer
Science Engineering, pp.324-331, 2014.

[3] Z. Li et al., “Reducing Mutual Coupling of MIMO Antennas with Parasitic

Elements for Mobile Terminals,” IEEE Antennas and Wireless
PropagationLetters,Vol.60,No.2,pp.473–481, 2012