Int. J. Electron. Commun.

(AEÜ) 100 (2019) 144–152

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Electronics and

Communications (AEÜ)
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aeue

Regular paper

Metamaterial based superstrate towards the isolation and gain

enhancement of MIMO antenna for WLAN application
Robert Mark a,⇑, Neha Rajak b, Kaushik Mandal c, Soma Das a
a
Department of ECE, Institute of Technology, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya (Central University), Bilaspur, India
b
Department of ECE, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, India
c
Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents the implementation of metamaterial based superstrate inspired multiple input mul-
Received 22 July 2018 tiple output (MIMO) antenna with enhanced isolation and gain. Superstrate consist of novel hexagonal
Accepted 11 January 2019 nested loop double negative (DNG) metamaterial is placed above the MIMO antenna and it exhibits iso-
lation performance better than 24 dB over the entire WLAN band (5.68–6.05 GHz) with a remarkable
peak gain of 7.98 dBi. Superstrate reduces the mutual coupling (MC) between the antenna elements by
Keywords: absorbing the near field component of the magnetic field. Reflection coefficient, transmission coefficient
Mutual coupling
and radiation properties further confirm the performance of the proposed design for wireless applica-
Metamaterials
Superstrate
tions. The prototype of the proposed design is fabricated and validated through measurement that shows
Isolation enhancement good agreement with the simulation result.
Multiple input multiple output Ó 2019 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna system is the
backbone of the current 4G and 5G wireless system that demand
high data rate within limited bandwidth and power level [1]. To
increase data throughput multiple antenna systems used to incor-
porate to increase the number of independent channels between
transmitter and receiver in a multipath environment. Due to the
physical limitation of portable wireless devices, antenna elements
separation is usually small which causes strong mutual coupling
(MC) among the antenna elements thus reducing the performance
of the system [2]. To reduce MC, many methods have been imple-
mented in literatures such as electromagnetic band gap (EBG)
structure, defected ground structure, polarization conversion isola-
tor based design that provides a band stop effect owing to the com-
bination of inductance and capacitance enhancing the isolation by
suppressing the surface wave interaction between the multiple
elements [3–6].Various parasitic elements along with stub
and neutralization lines were also implemented for MC reduction
[7–10] by introducing counter phased current against the excited
antenna. Various split ring resonator (SRR) and complementary
split ring resonator (CSRR) based geometry also offer low MC
[11–13] but affects the radiation property of antenna by increasing
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mark.robert.1989@ieee.org (R. Mark).
the back radiation. Recently, various MIMO antennas are engi-
neered with artificially periodic structures that exhibit negative
permittivity or permeability or both properties with dimension
much smaller than the wavelength known as metamaterial
(MTM) [14–16], to improve the antenna performance characteris-
tics. A unique emerging technique has been developed recently
in which two dimensions MTM, known as metasurface, are used
as superstrate structure placed above the antenna to improve var-
ious antenna performances such as gain and bandwidth [17,18].
However, various recent MIMO antenna systems are also utilizing
metamaterial based design techniques to reduce cross polarization
and mutual coupling [19–22].
In the design of Shafique et al. [19], electric metamaterial mod-
ified from the conventional CSRR is etched both on top and bottom
plane to reduce electric field normal to the substrate, however gain
as well as front to back ratio is deteriorated due to radiation loss
from the ground plane of the antenna. An Epsilon-and-mu-near-
zero (EMNZ) metamaterial is introduced as superstrate at height
of 10 mm to improve both isolation and directivity of an antenna
[20]. Another approach to reduce the effect of mutual coupling is
reported in [21], which involves a metasurface shield, constructed
of a unique SRR, designed to provide bandstop function. However,
in this case, the center-to-center distance is quite large (
ko/2 at
the resonating frequency). In [22], complementary two-turn spiral
resonators are introduced in the ground between the two antenna
elements to act as a wideband band-notch filter to improve

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeue.2019.01.011
1434-8411/Ó 2019 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
 R. Mark et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 100 (2019) 144–152 145

antenna isolation by 16 dB, whereas no improvement in gain was
reported.
In this paper, an effort has been made to develop a novel meta-
material inspired superstrate structure placed above the two ele-
ments MIMO antenna to enhance the gain and to improve the
isolation between closely spaced antenna elements. The super-
strate is placed at height of 9 mm (0.175 ko) above antenna surface
to reduce MC between radiating elements by reducing the near-
field coupling effect in the H-plane. The metamaterial superstrate
structure consists of hexagonal ring nested loop structure acting
as DNG metamaterial that blocks the near-field components of
the magnetic field without affecting the far field radiation patterns.
Using this proposed technique, the isolation between the closely
spaced antenna elements (with edge-to-edge separation of
0.095 ko; ko is free space wavelength at 5.7 GHz) is obtained as
24 dB, thereby reducing the mutual coupling by 10 dB. The com-
mercial electromagnetic software CST Microwave Studio (MWS)
is employed for simulation and optimization of different character-
istic parameters of the proposed design.
The paper is further organized as follows. The section II
describes metamaterial unit cell design and analysis. In Section III,
two element MIMO antenna loaded with superstrate for MC reduc-
tion has been discussed. In section IV, various parametric study
regarding MTM superstrate height and spacing between the unit
cell, surface current distribution etc have been studied and also
various MIMO performance parameters are validated. In section
V, experimental results are compared with simulated results and
finally, section VI presents the conclusion along with a compara-
tive study of proposed antenna with previous literatures in the
context of using MTM superstrate for mutual coupling reduction.
2. Unit cell design
A MTM unit cell of dimension 15  15 mm2, consisting of
metallic hexagonal rings nested inside each other, is designed on
a single sided Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 with relative permittivity
(E r = 2.2), loss tangent (tan d) = 0.009) and a substrate thickness
of 0.787 mm as shown in Fig. 1 (a). The hexagonal loops produce
the inductance and the gaps between two loops produce capaci-
tance. Uniform electromagnetic wave is applied on the unit cell
from positive and negative Z-direction maintaining the perfect
electric and magnetic boundary walls along the X and Y axes,
respectively to obtain reflection (S11) and transmission (S21) coeffi-
cient using CST Microwave Studio. The effective material parame-
ters are extracted using the algorithm presented in [23]. The
mathematical relations between scattering parameters, permittiv-
ity and permeability of the material are given in Eqs. (1)–(4) as
described in [23–25]:

6
Re(∈r)
5
Img(∈r)
4 Re(μr)
Img(μr)
Effective ∈r and μr

-1

-2

-3
3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0
Frequency (GHz)
(a) (b)

1.1
270 S1,1
1.0 S11
S21 S2,1
0.9
180
S parameter Magnitude

0.8
Phase (Degree)

0.7 90
0.6
0.5 0
0.4
0.3 -90
0.2
-180
0.1
0.0
-270
-0.1
4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0
Frequency (GHz) Frequency(GHz)
(c) (d)
Fig. 1. (a) Top view of hexagonal nested loop metamaterial unit cell. The optimized dimensions are LM = WM = 15 mm, a = 7 mm, b = 5.25 mm, c = 3.95 mm, i = 1 mm,
e = 1.35 mm, f = 0.25 mm, g = 0.40 mm and h = 0.30 mm (b) Extracted effective parameters of the metamaterial (c) Magnitude plot of transmission and reflection coefficients
for the metamaterial unit cell (d) Phase plot of transmission and reflection coefficients for the metamaterial unit cell.
146 R. Mark et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 100 (2019) 144–152

sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ð1 þ S11 Þ2  S221 l¼gz ð4Þ
z¼ ð1Þ
ð1  S11 Þ2  S221
Where, ko is the wave number, Z is the normalized impedance, d is
S21 the thickness of the material, l is the effective permeability, E is the
ejgko d ¼ ð2Þ effective permittivity and g is the refractive index. The graph in
1  S11 z1
zþ1
Fig. 1(b) shows that the both relative permeability and permittivity
g are negative in the desired frequency band (5.2–6.8 GHz) which
E¼ ð3Þ justifies that the unit cell is acting as a DNG or left handed material
z
(LHM). Fig. 1(c) and (d) shows the magnitude and phase of the

Fig. 2. (a) Two Port MIMO antenna (b) Top view of superstrate geometry (c) Side view of proposed antenna. The dimensions are Lsub = 60 mm Wsub = 32 mm, H = 9 mm,
Lp = 18 mm, Wp = 16 mm, L1 = 22 mm, p = 4 mm and d = 5 mm.
 R. Mark et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 100 (2019) 144–152 147

S-parameters (both transmission and reflection characteristics) of 4. Result and discussion

the metamaterial, and it exhibits a rejection band over the
frequency range 4.8–6.8 GHz. The LHM has a property to act like
lens to focus the propagating waves in a directive pattern thereby
increasing the gain of antenna [21]. The hexagonal metallic rings
reduce the near magnetic field, linked between H plane coupled
antennas, by offering an anti parallel current path which cancels
near magnetic field coupling in vertical direction.
3. Antenna design with metamaterial superstrate
The geometry of proposed two element MIMO antenna with
superstrate is shown in Fig. 2. Two rectangular patch antennas of
identical size 18  16 mm2 with coaxial probe feed at a distance
of p = 4 mm from the side of the patch for 50 O impedance match-
ing are designed as shown in Fig. 2(a). The design is printed on
60  32  1.57 mm3 RT/Duroid 5870 substrate with E r = 2.33,
keeping edge-to-edge separation of 5 mm (0.095 ko) between
two patches for the best performance of antenna; ko is the free
space wavelength at 5.7 GHz. The superstrate structure, used with
this antenna, consists of 8 unit cells in (4x2) rows printed on top of
the substrate of size (60  40 mm2) with no copper on bottom side.
The two rows of unit cells are separated by a spacing of 10 mm and
are optimized for better isolation (Fig. 2(b)). The superstrate is kept
at height H = 9 mm above the patch antenna using hollow plastic
rod support as shown in Fig. 2(c) to achieve isolation better than
24 dB in the 5.6 GHz to 6.05 GHz frequency band.
0
-5
-10
-15
S-parameter(dB)
A parametric study has been done to optimize the height (H) of
MTM superstrate above patch and spacing (d1) between the rows
of unit cells to find an optimum design so as to reduce
S21 < 24 dB without affecting the antenna parameters i.e. radia-
tion pattern and gain. The optimized values of H and d1 finally
helped in reduction of mutual coupling caused by near-field radia-
tion. Fig. 3 shows the simulated S-parameter of the antenna with
and without superstrate. It can be seen that there is a shift in res-
onating frequency from 5.7 GHz to 5.85 GHz after using super-
strate because of change in effective permittivity coming from
cavity effect due to superstrate placed above the patch. The simu-
lated result shows a bandwidth increment of 3% due to superstrate,
with S11 < 10 dB and S21 < 24 dB from (5.8–5.59) to (6.03–
5.6 GHz) covering 5.8 GHz WLAN. The antenna efficiency is better
than 84% with a peak gain of 8.1dBi at 5.85 GHz. Fig. 4 shows the
simulated radiation patterns of the antenna for both E and H-
plane peak gains emerges in the broadside direction. The super-
strate causes a 30°shift on the directions of the main beam in the
y-z plane where as there is no change in x-z plane pattern.
The effects of different design parameters on gain, bandwidth
and isolation performance are given below:
4.1. Height of superstrate from the antenna surface (H)
The given design is simulated for different height of superstrate,
H to examine its effect on the S-parameter. As shown in Fig. 5 (a),
by increasing the height above 10 mm impedance matching of
antenna starts to degrade at the resonance frequency. But for the
H below 9 mm, the resonance frequency is shifted toward a higher
frequency range. However, the mutual coupling value (S21)
remains below 15 dB for any range of height, H (Fig. 5(b)). It is

-20 observed form this analysis that for the lower height, a shift in
-25 the resonance frequency is higher and for the higher gap the impe-
-30 dance matching is poor. Finally, the air gap is optimized and fixed
S11 with Superstrate at 9 mm for best impedance matching and isolation level.
-35
S11 without Superstrate
-40
S21 without Superstrate
-45 4.2. Row separation between the unit cell, d1
S21 with Superstrate
-50
-55 The variations in S-parameter due to change in gap (d1)
4.8 5.0 5.2 5.4 5.6 5.8 6.0 6.2 6.4 6.6 6.8
between the rows of unit cell, are shown in Fig. 6. It shows that
Frequency (GHz)
with decrease of distance d1 between the rows of unit cell, the res-
Fig. 3. Simulated S-parameter of two port MIMO antenna with and without onating frequency shifts towards higher frequency side where as
superstrate. there is less variation in mutual coupling i.e. S21 < 24 dB in the
studied range of d1. The distance between the rows of unit cell is

0
0 H-Plane
E-Plane 330 30
330 30
0 0

-15 -15 300 60

300 60
-30 -30

-45 -45
dB dB 270 90
270 90
-45
-45
-30
-30
240 120 -15 240 120
-15

0 Co-Pol(with superstrate) 0 Co-Pol(With superstrate)

210 150 Cross-Pol(with superstrate) 210 150 Cross-Pol(With superstrate)
180 Co-Pol(without superstrate) 180 Co-Pol(Without superstrate)
Cross-Pol(without superstrate) Cross-Pol(Without superstrate)
(a) (b)
Fig. 4. Simulated far-field radiation patterns of two port MIMO antenna with and without superstrate (a) E-plane (y-z plane) (b) H-plane (x-z Plane).
148 R. Mark et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 100 (2019) 144–152

0 0
H=12mm
H=10mm
H=9m m
-10 -10 H=8m m
H=5m m

S21 dB
S11,dB

-20 -20

H=12mm
H=10mm
-30 -30
H=9mm
H=8mm
H=5mm
-40 -40
5.0 5.2 5.4 5.6 5.8 6.0 6.2 6.4 6.6 6.8 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0
Frequency,(GHz) Frequency(GHz)

(a) (b)
Fig. 5. Simulated result of (a) S11 (b) S21 for different value of height, H.

Row separation between unit cell, d1 Row spacing between unit cell, d1
0 -10
At H=9mm (constant)

-20
-10

-30
S21,dB
S 11,dB

-20 d1=12mm
d1=12mm d1=10mm
d1=10mm d1=9mm
-40
d1=9mm d1=8mm
-30
d1=8mm d1=6mm
d1=6mm d1=4mm
-50
d1=4mm
-40
5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 6.0 6.1 6.2 5.2 5.4 5.6 5.8 6.0 6.2
Frequency (GHz) Frequency(GHz)
(a) (b)

Fig. 6. Simulated result of (a) S11 (b) S21 for different value of unit cell separation at height, H = 9 mm (constant).

fixed at a spacing of d1 = 10 mm as impedance bandwidth is max- calculated from far field patterns of the individual antennas. How-
imum covering the 5.8 GHz WLAN band. ever, it can be found from S-parameters [7,8] and it is expressed in
the following equation (5).
  
4.3. Surface current distribution S S12 þ S S22 2
ECC; qe ¼  11
 21  ð5Þ
The surface current distribution of the antenna is shown in 1  jS11 j2  jS21 j2 1  jS22 j2  jS12 j2
Fig. 7 to validate the effect of superstrate structure on the reduc-
Another MIMO performance parameter i.e. TARC (Cta ) is defined
tion of mutual coupling. It can be seen from the analysis that in
as the ratio of the square root of the total reflected power to that of
absence of superstrate when antenna 1 (left side) is excited and
the square root of the total incident power [1]. During calculation,
antenna 2 is terminated with 50 O load. The current is also dis-
it is assumed that reflected signal has unity magnitude but a ran-
tributed on the centre portion of antenna 2 (right side) with radi-
dom phase, hr. For the N port antenna it is given in the following
ation occurring from the right and left edges of the antenna (Fig. 7
Eq. (6) where ai and bi represent the incident and reflected signals,
(a)) and thus mutual coupling due to excitation of antenna 1 occurs
respectively.
at antenna 2. With superstrate structure placed above patch
antenna, the current from antenna 1 is concentrated largely on qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
PN 2
the four hexagonal nested rings MTM structure above the excited t i¼1 jbi j
q
Ca ¼ ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
PN ð6Þ
antenna, where the currents are in an anti parallel path in each half 2
i¼1 jai j
circle of the ring as well as in consecutive rings (Fig. 7(b)). These
anti parallel current paths, therefore, cancel out the near coupling However, for two port MIMO antenna the TARC can be esti-
field between antenna elements successfully. The same is true mated from the S-parameter [1] and given by (7):
when antenna 2 is excited and antenna 1 is terminated.
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
To further analyse the performance of two element MIMO 2 2
jðS11 þ S12 ejhr Þj þ jðS21 þ S22 ejhr Þj
antenna with superstrate, some diversity performance parameters Cta ¼ ð7Þ
are also calculated such as Envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) 2
and Total active reflection coefficient (TARC) to ensure the working Fig. 8 shows the variation of simulated and measured TARC and
ability of this antenna under the multipath fading situations. ECC ECC with frequency. Within the 10 dB impedance bandwidth
(qe) is the measure of diversity performance of antenna which is (5.6–6.05 GHz), antenna with MTM superstrate reduces the
 R. Mark et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 100 (2019) 144–152 149

Fig. 7. Surface current distribution (a) Without Superstrate (b) With Superstrate.

0 0.50
0.45
Simulated
-10 0.40 Measured

0.35

-20 0.30
TARC (dB)

ECC
0.25

-30 0.20
Simulation
Measured 0.15

-40 0.10
0.05
0.00
-50
4.8 5.0 5.2 5.4 5.6 5.8 6.0 6.2 6.4 6.6 6.8 4.5 4.8 5.1 5.4 5.7 6.0 6.3 6.6 6.9
Frequency (GHz) Frequency(GHz)
(a) (b)
Fig. 8. Simulated and measured MIMO performance parameter with frequency for the proposed antenna (a) average TARC (b) ECC.

correlation between adjacent antenna. Fig. 8 (a) shows the average
TARC curves with random phase excitation at port 1 that retains
the original characteristics of the reflection coefficient of the pro-
posed antenna. The value of ECC is within 0.4  103 to
0.7  103 in the desired frequency range. Since value of ECC is
close to zero, the proposed design is suitable for MIMO system.
5. Experimental validation
The proposed MIMO antenna is fabricated and measured by
Agilent N5230A network analyzer and the experimental arrange-
ment followed is as shown in Fig. 9(a) & (b). The radiation patterns
are measured in controlled environment where antenna under test
(AUT) is used as receiving antenna and by rotating the AUT along
the axis, normalized E-plane and H-plane patterns are plotted. It
is observed that both the peaks of H-plane and E-plane appear in
the broadside direction (Fig. 10). Since two antennas are identical,
the return loss characteristics of both the antenna elements remain
same with resonating frequency at 5.85 GHz. The measured results
indicate that the S11 < 10 dB and S21 < 24 dB over 5.6–6.05 GHz
frequency band (Fig. 11). The measured gain of the antenna is
improved from 6.3 dBi to 7.98 dBi i.e. by 1.68 dBi at the resonance
frequency because of metamaterial superstrate structure as shown
in Fig. 12 (a). Simulated and measured total efficiency of the pro-
posed antenna is shown in Fig. 12 (b). Here the total efficiency of
the antenna is calculated using the ratio of radiated power from

Fig. 9. Prototype of fabricated antenna (a) Under measurement (b) Side view.
150 R. Mark et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 100 (2019) 144–152

0 E plane 0 H Plane
330 30 0 330 30
0

-10 300 60
-10 300 60

-20
-20
270 90
dB 270 90 dB
-20
-20

-10 240 120

-10 240 120
Simulated
0 210 150 Measured
Simulated
0 210 150 180
Measured
180
(a) (b)
Fig. 10. Simulated and Measured far field radiation patterns of proposed MIMO antenna with superstrate at 5.85 GHz (a) E Plane (b) H-Plane.

Proposed MIMO Antenna

0 0
Simulated
-10 Measured
-10
-20

-30
S11(dB)

S21,dB

-20
-40
Simulation
-50
-30 Measured
-60

-40 -70
5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 5.0 5.2 5.4 5.6 5.8 6.0 6.2 6.4 6.6 6.8
Frequency,GHz Frequency,GHz
(a) (b)
Fig. 11. Simulated and Measured S-parameter results of the proposed MIMO antenna with superstrate structure (a) S11 (b) S21.

8.5 Without superstrate Simulated 100

Without superstrate Measured Simulated Total Efficiency
With superstrate Simulated Measured Total Efficiency
8.0 With superstrate Measured
95
Efficiency(%)

90
Gain, dBi

7.5

85
7.0

80
6.5

75
5.65 5.70 5.75 5.80 5.85 5.65 5.70 5.75 5.80 5.85 5.90
Frequency (GHz) Frequency (GHz)
(a) (b)
Fig. 12. Simulated and Measured (a) Gain of proposed MIMO antenna structure with and without superstrate and (b) Total efficiency of proposed MIMO antenna with
superstrate.

the antenna to input power to antenna. It can be seen that over the The fluctuations in the measured result are very small that shows
desired band of operation, the efficiency of antenna remains above good agreement with the simulated results. From the measured
80% as the antenna is designed on very low loss Roger substrate. result, the implementation of the superstrate structure is seen to
 R. Mark et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 100 (2019) 144–152 151

Table 1
Comparison between proposed designs with other MIMO antenna system.

Ref Patch size/size Technique Center Edge to edge Isolation Isolation Gain Simulated Inter element
(mm3) & substrate frequency fo spacing (mm) (dB) enhancement (dBi) efficiency (%) spacing (mm)
(E r) (GHz) (dB)
[2] 50  80  0.76 Loop excitation 5.8 14.4 (0.5 ko) 17 – 6 >80 36.4
RO4350 (3.48)
[3] 26  26  0.80 Defected Ground 5.7 4 (0.076 ko) 15.4 – 1.41 – –
FR-4 (4.4)
[4] – Polarization 5.8 4.6 –22.3 22.3 – <70 20.5 (0.39 ko)
FR-4 (4.6) conversion
isolator
[8] 30  29.52  1.6 Modified 2.45 6 (0.05 ko) 34 34 Increase – 36 (0.3 ko)
FR-4 (4.3) serpentine by 1.1
structure
[11] 30  30  3.18 Spiral shaped 2.27 20.5 (0.155 ko) 25 15 – – 70 (0.53 ko)
(6) PDGSs
[20] 72.5  105  1.57 EMNZ 2.6 4 (0.03 ko) 30 20 Increase <70 –
FR-4 (4.3) Superstrate by 3.5
Proposed 18  16  1.57 DNG 5.7 5 (0.095 ko) 24 10 Increase >85 22 (0.4 ko)
Design RT/Duroid 5870 Metamaterial by 1.68
(2.33) Superstrate

give a mutual coupling reduction of 10 dB within the operating References

bandwidth (5.6–6.05 GHz). The performance of the proposed
MIMO antenna are compared with earlier designs in terms of size,
isolation techniques, isolation improvement and spacing between
antenna elements and is summarized in Table 1. It shows that
the high isolation, enhanced gain and better efficiency with
reduced inter element spacing as well as narrow edge-to-edge
spacing between the radiating elements are the main advantages
of the proposed design.
6. Conclusion
An effective technique has been proposed for wireless applica-
tions, utilizing a novel metamaterial based superstrate structure
placed above the antennas to enhance both the gain and isolation
of a two port MIMO antenna. A DNG metamaterial with 4  2 unit
cells is placed as superstrate at a gap of 9 mm (0.174 ko) above the
patch surface to reduce the coupling by absorbing near magnetic
field between two antennas. This also results in increased gain
due to development of cavity effect because of high reflectivity
thus increasing the antenna gain. From comparisons between the
two port antenna with and without the MTM superstrate has
shown significant improvement in term of isolation from 14 dB
to 24 dB and gain enhancement of 1.68dBi with little shift in reso-
nant frequency without affecting the desired WLAN frequency
bandwidth (5.6–6.05 GHz). A prototype of the design is fabricated
and the measured results show good radiation characteristics and
improved gain along with a reduction in the mutual coupling. Low
correlation coefficient values of less than 0.4  103 along with
stable TARC curve shows that the proposed design is suitable for
MIMO wireless application.
Acknowledgement
The Authors like to acknowledge Rogers Corporation, USA for
providing high frequency material under university sample
programme.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeue.2019.01.011.
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