1196
15, 2016
A Four-Port MIMO Antenna Using Concentric
Square-Ring Patches Loaded With CSRR
for High Isolation
Anitha Ramachandran, Sarin Valiyaveettil Pushpakaran, Member, IEEE, Mohanan Pezholil, Senior Member, IEEE,
and Vasudevan Kesavath, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—A novel four-port multiple-input–multiple-output
(MIMO) antenna system is designed using concentric square-ring
patch antennas. All four ports are made to resonate at 2.4 GHz
ISM band with an overall system dimension of mm .
This design uses complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR)
loaded on its ground plane for enhanced isolation of 22 dB
between patch antenna elements. CSRR reduces mutual coupling
by about 6.5 dB. The antenna operates with a 2:1 VSWR band-
width of 75 MHz centered at 2.45 GHz. This collocated antenna
system satisfies MIMO diversity performance with low envelope
correlation between its waveforms. The effectiveness of concentric
rings in MIMO design along with proposed isolation enhancement
technique is validated using measurements from a prototype.
Index Terms—Angle diversity, complementary split-ring res-
onator, correlation coefficient, multiple-input–multiple-output,
mutual coupling, polarization diversity, square ring.
I. INTRODUCTION
A DVANCEMENTS in modern wireless communication
technology demands high-data-rate transmission. Mul-
tiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) technology has proved
to be very effective for high-data-rate transmission in rich
scattering environments [1]. It is more challenging to achieve
improved channel capacity with MIMO antenna systems that
are compact and collocated. Such systems have elements placed
very close to each other and thus make them a good candidate
compatible with small wireless portable devices.
In such compact antenna systems, there will be high corre-
lation between elements and, therefore, poor diversity perfor-
mance. The challenge of decoupling collocated MIMO systems
is to arrange the antenna elements in the limited area without
impairing MIMO antenna performance. One efficient way to re-
duce the size of an MIMO antenna system is to make use of
Manuscript received October 14, 2015; accepted November 07, 2015. Date
of publication November 10, 2015; date of current version April 07, 2016. This
work was supported in part by the Department of Science and Technology (DST)
and the University Grants Commission (UGC), Government of India.
A. Ramachandran, M. Pezholil, and V. Kesavath are with the Centre for
Research in ElectroMagnetics and Antennas (CREMA), Department of Elec-
tronics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India.
S. Valiyaveettil Pushpakaran is with the Department of Electronics, Govern-
ment College, Chittur, Palakkad 678104, India (e-mail: vasudevankdr@gmail.
com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2015.2499322
1536-1225 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
polarization diversity and angle diversity [2]. Orthogonal po-
larization has proved to provide high isolation with minimum
space requirements compared to a spatially separated MIMO.
Similarly, angle diversity makes use of antennas radiating in dif-
ferent angles, producing diverse radiation patterns. Low mutual
coupling should be ensured between adjacent elements to have
best diversity performance.
Various techniques have been reported to reduce coupling be-
tween collocated antenna elements. A defected ground structure
(DGS), consisting of a series of slits with stopband at the fre-
quency of interest, is etched on ground to achieve isolation [3].
DGS, which resonates at the operating frequency and radiates
the coupling waves, is employed in [4]. All these designs have a
drawback of significantly high back-radiation due to large sur-
face area. Complimentary split-ring resonators (CSRRs) were
used as periodic structures between spatially separated antenna
elements to reduce coupling in [5]. These structures can block
the electromagnetic energy in one direction and guide it along
the transverse direction. It acts as a filter between antenna el-
ements that are very close to each other, providing isolation
over a required bandwidth. Moreover, CSRR structures have re-
duced size and simple and printable design easy to manufacture.
In this letter, polarization and angle diversity techniques are
employed in square-ring patch antennas to have four-element
MIMO. Coupling between identically polarized elements in col-
located concentric rings is higher. Isolation is achieved here by
etching a pair of subwavelength resonant-structure CSRRs on
ground at the strong coupling areas. This antenna design pro-
vides higher isolation than recently reported MIMO four-port
designs [6]–[8].
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The proposed design uses concentric ring patches resonating
in different transverse magnetic modes. To achieve compact-
ness, this design was initialized with a single ring resonating
in the two fundamental orthogonal modes for and . The
square-ring metal strip is supported by FR4 dielectric substrate
of relative permittivity , loss tangent , and
thickness 1.6 mm. The ring antenna has outer and inner dimen-
sions as and to resonate in 2.4 GHz ISM band. Simu-
lations are performed in CST Microwave Studio software. The
microstrip square-ring patch antenna is more compact than the
conventional rectangular patch. It also has more enhanced
bandwidth than a square patch due to the low amount of energy
RAMACHANDRAN et al.: FOUR-PORT MIMO ANTENNA USING CONCENTRIC SQUARE-RING PATCHES LOADED WITH CSRR
Fig. 1. Parametric study of with ring patch width ( ).
Fig. 2. Geometry of four-port MIMO antenna: (a) top; (b) side view.
stored under the metallic regions achieved by removing the cen-
tral conducting portion. With a VSWR bandwidth of 75 MHz,
about 40% improvement was achieved for the ring antenna,
with increased to 6.6 mm as shown in Fig. 1. Transmission
curve shifts to a lower frequency with increase in , how-
ever coupling levels remain unaltered. The feeding structure is
simple, and impedance matching can be done easily by varying
the feed along the two principal - and -axes.
Antenna dimensions are as follows: mm,
mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm,
mm.
The second square ring encloses the inner ring, thus making
the structure compact rather than placing elements with half-
wavelength spatial separation. Feed positions are chosen so as
to excite higher-order orthogonal modes with high isolation be-
tween them. The concentric square-ring patches forming the
four-port antenna are shown in Figs. 2 and 3 with their dimen-
sions. The two ports of the outer ring have low VSWR band-
width, which may restrict its practical applications. The small
bandwidth of these ports is due to the feed positions chosen so
as to excite orthogonal higher-order modes with minimum cou-
pling. For higher-order modes where the substrate thickness is
not negligible, the effects of surface wave propagation will be
high. To improve bandwidth, reactive loading of the antennas is
done by etching slots on each ring arm. These half-wavelength
slots have resonant frequency near to the operating frequency
of main antenna. Thus, the operating bandwidth is enhanced
by 60% from 50 to 80 MHz as shown in Fig. 4. Slit loading
1197
Fig. 3. Geometry of four-port MIMO antenna: (a) bottom; (b) CSRR dimen-
sions enlarged.
Fig. 4. Bandwidth enhancement with ring slits.
also reduces the coupling between orthogonal higher-order ring
modes. Ports and being linearly polarized along the -axis
have high coupling between them; the case is similar between
-polarized elements and .
III. PROPOSED ISOLATION STRUCTURE
There are mainly two sources of mutual coupling, the sur-
face wave coupling between antenna elements printed on same
substrate and the current flowing on the shared ground. In order
to reduce coupling currents, CSRRs are etched on the ground
plane between the square rings using the design formula in [9].
The proposed structure consists of two CSRRs etched on cor-
ners of the antenna in between the two concentric square rings
with a tilt angle of 45 . These are points where coupling currents
are stronger. CSRR exhibits a resonant property in the presence
of vertically polarized electric fields. The presence of CSRR on
the ground alters standing-wave distribution within the antenna.
When an electromagnetic wave is incident in the antenna, the
magnetic field along -direction interacts with the CSRR etched
on ground of antenna as shown in Fig. 5(a). This creates an elec-
tromotive force inside the antenna and disturbs the induced cur-
rents inside the ground plane. As a result, the ground currents
on the adjacent ring changes its polarity by nearly 180 , which
can be observed from ground current distribution in Fig. 5(b).
Thus, vertically polarized space waves of and are out of
phase now, which ensures the least coupling between them. The
disturbance can change the characteristics such as equivalent
inductance and capacitance, thus obtaining the bandstop at the
frequency of interest.
1198 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 15, 2016

Fig. 5. Polarity reversal on adjacent ring with excited at 0 phase with and
without CSRR. (a) H field. (b) Surface currents.

Fig. 7. Simulated -parameters without CSRR on ground.

Fig. 8. Simulated -parameters with CSRR on ground.

Fig. 6. Surface current on ground without and with CSRR for (a) , (b) ,
(c) , and (d) .

In order to further investigate the proposed four-port an-

tenna, current distributions on ground plane for four ports at
the resonant frequency 2.45 GHz are simulated and displayed
in Fig. 6. Current distribution with CSRR on ground provides
clear evidence of improved isolation between the two ring
patches. Ground coupling currents are diminished significantly,
resulting in an isolation enhancement of 6.5 dB.
Fig. 9. (a) Fabricated prototype. (b) Measured -parameters of fabricated
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION prototype.

From Fig. 6, it can be observed that current path is equal to

a half-wavelength for and along two planes being the Fig. 9. Reasonable agreement between the simulated and mea-
two degenerate modes and . For and , the sured results is achieved. Measured peak gain values of inner
current flow path has two maximas along one ring arm and a ring modes and outer ring modes are 4 and 3.4 dBi, respec-
single maxima along the other ring arm. This guarantees the ex- tively. Peak efficiency obtained for inner ring ports is 84.6%,
citation of and modes, respectively, for these two and for outer ring ports is about 72.5% in the 2.4-GHz ISM
ports. The simulated -parameters of MIMO antenna without band. Far-field radiation pattern measurements done inside an
and with CSRR on ground are shown in Figs. 7 and 8. The cou- anechoic chamber, by exciting individual ports and terminating
pling between identically polarized elements and is re- all other three ports with matched load, are shown in Fig. 10.
duced by 6.5 dB with the isolation structure. Same is the case Measured normalized radiation pattern for all four modes in 0
with ; also note that the shift in resonant frequency is very plane and 90 plane of the antenna shows that feed ports and
small with CSRR loaded on ground. All the four ports res- have polarization planes perpendicular to each other, which
onate at 2.45 GHz with a minimum 2:1 VSWR bandwidth of ensures least coupling between ports. The same polarization di-
75 MHz. The fabricated prototype and measured -parameters versity can also be observed between ring antenna ports and
in R&S ZVB20 PNA vector network analyzer are shown in . The shape of the pattern is different for fundamental and
RAMACHANDRAN et al.: FOUR-PORT MIMO ANTENNA USING CONCENTRIC SQUARE-RING PATCHES LOADED WITH CSRR
Fig. 10. Far-field radiation pattern measured at 0 and 90 planes. (a) Port 1.
(b) Port 2. (c) Port 3. (d) Port 4.
Fig. 11. Correlation coefficients between waveforms.
higher-order modes, so that they radiate differently, which guar-
antees angle diversity.
V. MIMO PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
The diversity performances of MIMO system can be evalu-
ated by computing envelope correlation coefficient. It provides
correlation among the amplitudes of individual elements of the
antenna. It can be computed from -parameters or from far-field
radiation patterns. -parameter approach offers a simple proce-
dure, but does not provide exact results, hence it is preferable to
compute correlation coefficients from radiation pattern by using
the following equation:
(1)
An outdoor urban environment can be typically characterized
by a Gaussian distribution in elevation and uniform along
azimuth [10]. XPR is the cross-polarization rate of the incident
1199
field and is defined as , where and are
the average power along the spherical coordinates and .
and are the complex envelopes of and components
of far-field radiated field when only th e th port is excited and
other ports are terminated with 50- load. and are the
probability distributions of the power incident on the antenna
in the - and -polarizations, respectively. The angle is
defined by in elevation and in azimuth. Computed values
of envelope correlation coefficients are plotted in Fig. 11. It is
observed that within the operating band, correlation coefficients
are below 0.4, which ensures good MIMO performance.
VI. CONCLUSION
A four-port MIMO using concentric square rings resonating
in multiple modes is presented here. A nonperiodic subwave-
length resonant structure CSRR is etched on ground at the ring
corners to reduce mutual coupling between identically polar-
ized elements. The dimensions of rings antenna and CSRR are
adjusted so that all four ports resonate at same frequency of
2.45 GHz with a high isolation of at least 22 dB between its
individual elements. CSRR reverses the polarity of coupling
current on common shared ground so as to improve isolation
between elements having polarization along the same direc-
tion. The proposed antenna system has simple structure, and the
isolation technique employed does not include any additional
metallic parts or require any intricate fabrication.
REFERENCES
[1] G. J. Foschini and M. J. Gans, “On limits of wireless communications
in a fading environment when using multiple antennas,” Wireless Pers.
Commun., vol. 6, pp. 311–335, 1998.
[2] A. S. Konanur et al., “Increasing wireless channel capacity through
MIMO systems employing co-located antennas,” IEEE Trans. Microw.
Theory Tech., vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 1837–1844, Jun. 2005.
[3] H. Li, J. Xiong, and S. He, “A compact planar MIMO antenna system of
four elements with similar radiation characteristics and isolation struc-
ture,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 8, pp. 1107–1110,
2009.
[4] R. Anitha, V. P. Sarin, P. Mohanan, and K. Vasudevan, “Enhanced
isolation with defected ground structure in MIMO antenna,” Electron.
Lett., vol. 50, no. 24, pp. 1784–1786, 2014.
[5] M. M. Bait-Suwailam, O. F. Siddiqui, and O. M. Ramahi, “Mu-
tual coupling reduction between microstrip patch antennas using
slotted-complementary split-ring resonators,” IEEE Antennas Wireless
Propag. Lett., vol. 9, pp. 876–878, 2010.
[6] M. S. Sharawi, M. U. Khan, A. B. Numan, and D. N. Aloi, “A CSRR
loaded MIMO antenna system for ISM band operation,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 61, no. 8, pp. 4265–4274, Aug. 2013.
[7] W.-J. Liao, C.-Y. H. sieh, B.-Y. Dai, and B.-R. Hsiao, “Inverted-
F/slot integrated dual-band four-antenna system for WLAN access
points,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 14, pp. 847–890,
2015.
[8] S. Soltani, S. Member, and R. D. Murch, “A compact planar printed
MIMO antenna design,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 63, no. 3,
pp. 1140–1149, Mar. 2015.
[9] R. Marqués, F. Martí, and M. Sorolla, Metamaterials With Negative
Parameters: Theory, Design and Microwave Applications. Hoboken,
NJ, USA: Wiley, 2008.
[10] R. Vaughan and J. Andersen, “Antenna diversity in mobile communi-
cation,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. VT-36, no. 4, pp. 149–172,
Nov. 1976.