Closely Spaced Series Fed Tapered Arrays for Base
Station Massive MIMO Application
Jogesh Chandra Dash1, Shilpa Kharche2, Jayanta Mukherjee3
1,2,3Electrical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai-400076, Maharashtra, India
(email: jcdash92@gmail.com1, shilpaukharche@gmail.com2, jayanta@ee.iitb.ac.in3)
Abstract - In this paper, series fed tapered array antenna for
base station massive MIMO (m-MIMO) application is proposed.
A 5-element series fed array is considered as an antenna sub-array
element for proposed m-MIMO antenna system. The sub-array
elements are tapered uniformly with respect to center element to
reduce side lobe level and mutual coupling from adjacent sub-
array. Simulation for two and eight element m-MIMO design
prototype is presented. A two-element m-MIMO prototype is
fabricated and measured for validation. A very closely spaced
( . ) sub-arrays offer mutual coupling less than –20 dB,
azimuth and elevation half-power beam width of 1050 and 300
respectively and side lobe level less than -20 dB.
Index Terms – Series fed array, Massive MIMO, Mutual
Coupling, Tapered array, Side lobe level
I. INTRODUCTION
Now-a-days, Multiple-input multiple-out (MIMO) system
is the face of next generation wireless communication. The
importance of MIMO is increasing day by day to fulfil the user
demands of high data rate, reliability in communication link and
high throughput. The next generation wireless communication
so called 5G is possible through the MIMO technology. The
expected channel capacity from 5G is 1000 times more than
existing 4G. To meet these expectations the most important
implementation of 5G technology would be based on ultra-
densification and massive MIMO (m-MIMO) as mentioned in
[1].
As far as the m-MIMO system is concerned, primarily this is
a scaled technology of MIMO system particularly for base
station implementation. Moreover, low roundtrip latency time,
high spectral and energy efficiency, excess degree of freedom,
time-domain duplex calibration, combat with pilot
contamination etc. are some key areas of focus for m-MIMO
[2]. However, the antenna design aspect for m-MIMO for base
station implementation is quite unequal than MIMO for mobile
handset. m-MIMO signifies the large-scale antenna system
where each base station is furnished with tens or hundreds of
numbers of antennas to provide enhanced channel capacity and
seamless user experience.
There is hand full of antenna designs for m-MIMO base
station application are available in literature. A 16-port m-
MIMO system based on patch antenna is presented in [3]. A 72-
ports triangular shaped m-MIMO antenna system is presented
in [4] for 5G base station. A dual polarised MIMO antenna for
millimetre wave 5G base station application is presented in [5].
978-1-7281-2577-0/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
Most of the antenna designs for base station m-MIMO system
presented earlier are based on uniform linear or planar/circular
configuration and few are based on corporate fed structures.
The Primary drawbacks of these types of array structures are
high cross-polar radiation, feed loss and lack of flexibility to get
shaped beam pattern. Moreover, generation of side lobes and
low mutual coupling due to high antenna density affect the
channel capacity of m-MIMO system. There are various
mathematical distribution models available such as binomial
and Chebyshev distributions [6] to reduce the side lobe level of
antenna array. A binomial microstrip array with side lobe
reduction is presented in [7]. A method for uniform linear array
design for decaying side lobe and beamwidth control based on
Taylor one-parameter method is presented in [8]. However, not
much work in the literature is available on m-MIMO antenna
designs having less side lobes and low mutual coupling,
controlled beam along with low mutual coupling.
Considering the above-mentioned issues, series feed antenna
array is used as sub array element for m-MIMO antenna design
for base station applications. Each series fed array uses linearly
tapered amplitude distribution with respect to patch width. The
series fed antenna array element offers directive and wide beam
pattern to reach out a greater number of users. It has lower side
lobe levels which helps to reduce the side lobe interaction
between the nearby elements and to minimize the field
correlation. A two and eight-element m-MIMO antenna system
design with five series fed antenna subarray elements is
designed and studied. A prototype of two-element m-MIMO
antenna system is fabricated for validation.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND SIMULATION
1. Two Sub-array Element Design
The schematic of proposed 2-element design prototype of
m-MIMO using series fed tapered array as sub-array element
of the system is shown in the Fig. 1. The antenna system is
designed at 3.3 GHz centre frequency using an FR4 substrate
having height of 1.6 mm and dielectric constant of 4.4. Here,
each individual antenna array of the m-MIMO consist of five
elements and elements are uniformly tapered from centre
element towards end with respect to their width. Uniform
width or aperture tapering of a series fed array is employed to
get the uniform amplitude tapering of signal fed.
Fig. 1 Schematic of proposed 8-element m-MIMO prototype

Tapering provides the lower side lobe level as compared to a

series fed antenna without tapering. The dimensions of single
sub-array shown in Fig. 1 are 0.3 , 0.19 ,
0.08 , 0.23 , 2.288 , 0.82 .The Fig. 3 Schematic of proposed 8-element m-MIMO prototype
antennas are excited through end fed configuration through a
/2 transmission line to get broad side radiation as well as 3.2 GHz to 3.45 GHz band. The mutual coupling (Sij) among
installation flexibility. Elements of the individual array are the sub-array elements is below -20 dB over the band in spite
connected by /2 transmission lines that provide 1800 phase of being closely spaced and having no external decoupling
mechanism, as shown in Fig. 5. The 2D radiation pattern
shift between patch edges to get equi-phase E-plane radiation.
showing E-plane and H-plane pattern of four individual sub-
The transmission lines are meandered in pulse shape to reduce
arrays are shown in Fig. 6. The patterns for single sub-array
the effective area of the antenna and to maintain the coupling
considered while other sub-arrays terminated to matched load.
between the nearby patch elements. The edge-to-edge
The patterns shows the directional property of sub-arrays with
separation between two nearby sub-arrays is 0.08 ,
side lobes below -20 dB.
signifies very close spacing between the m-MIMO elements.
The proposed m-MIMO system is designed and simulated in
CST MWS simulation environment using transient solver. The
simulated S-parameter results are shown in section III along
with measured data. The simulated E- field distribution of
single antenna is shown in Fig. 2 in the presence of an adjacent
antenna, which shows negligible coupling between the two sub-
arrays.

2. Eight Sub-array Element Design

The proposed series fed two element MIMO antenna system

is scaled to eight element m-MIMO antenna. The schematic of
proposed 8-element m-MIMO antenna using series fed tapered
array as sub-array element of the system is shown in the Fig. 3.
This is the scaled version counter part of 2-element design Fig. 4 Simulated structure of proposed 8-element m-MIMO
prototype, having same dimensional values as in section 1, for
base station m-MIMO antenna system. The overall dimensions 0
of the antenna is 20.8 2.288 28 3.08
. Fig. 4 shows the simulation of an eight sub-array m-MIMO, -10 Sii

The simulated S-parameter curves for the system is shown in

S-parameter (dB)

-20
Fig. 5. The m-MIMO system has good impedance matching, Sii
< -10 dB where i = 1, 2 …, 8), for each sub element over -30

-40

-50
Sij

-60

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6

Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 5 Simulated Sii (i = 1, 2 …8) and Sij (j = 1, 2 …8 for i j) parameter of 8-
Fig. 2 Simulate E-field distribution sub-array 1 element m-MIMO
 Fig. 8 Simulated and measured S-parameter results of 2 element MIMO array
of proposed m-MIMO

Fig. 6 Simulated radiation pattern of individual sub-array while other

terminated with matched load; sub-array (a) 2 (b) 4 (c) 6 (d) 8 of eight sub-array
m-MIMO

III. FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS

A two sub-array element antenna system is fabricated and
measured to validate the design. The fabricated system is shown
in Fig. 7. The corresponding measured and simulated S-
parameter curves are shown in Fig. 8. The simulated and
measures results are comparable and show that mutual coupling
is below -20 dB over the band. The simulated and measured E-
plane and H-plane radiation patterns (of a single sub-array using Fig. 9 Simulated and measured radiation pattern results of 2-element MIMO
matched termination to other sub-array) are shown in Fig. 9. array of proposed m-MIMO
Both the simulated and measured results are in good agreement.
The azimuth and elevation plane half power beam widths are
1050 and 300 respectively and side lobe level below -20 dB. The
antenna has directive pattern with low side love level, which is
use full for upcoming base station m-MIMO system. The
simulated and measured gain vs frequency plot is shown in Fig.
10. The proposed system is scalable to n-number of sub-array
elements, as it is done for eight sub-arrays in section II (2),
required for base station m-MIMO application.

Fig. 10 Simulate and measured gain vs frequency of antenna 1 while antenna 2

terminated with matched load

IV. CONCLUSION
Fig. 7 Fabricated 2 sub element array of proposed m-MIMO The problem of side lobe levels and low mutual coupling
associated with earlier m-MIMO system is addressed by using
series fed tapered array as sub-array. Two and eight-element m-
MIMO antenna is designed and presented. A two-element
prototype is fabricated and measured. Half-power beam width
of 1050 and 300 with respect to azimuth and elevation and side
lobe level below -20 dB were achieved. The mutual coupling
among the sub-array elements is below -20 dB being closely
spaced and having no external decoupling structure. The system
can be further upgraded for multi-beam, beam switch and beam
forming capability, which is essential for future 5G equipped
base station.
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