2017 Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium — Fall (PIERS — FALL), Singapore, 19–22 November

A Novel Compact Two Element MIMO Antenna with Pie Shaped

Slot Structure for Dual Band Applications
Nirdosh1 , Ashna Kakkar1 , Malay Ranjan Tripathy1 , and Arun Kumar Singh1, 2
1
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Amity School of Engineering and Technology
Amity University, Uttar Pradesh, Noida, India
2
Tata Teleservices Limited, Mathura Road, New Delhi 110065, India

Abstract— A compact 2-element MIMO (multiple-input-multiple-output) antenna is designed

for dual band applications. It has two wide frequency bands such as 2.82–8.21 GHz and 9.8–
12.42 GHz. The dimension of this antenna is 26 × 40 × 1.6 mm3 . The substrate is used as FR4
with relative permittivity of 4.4. The pie-like slots are introduced on the patch to improve
the isolation in proposed bands The simulation results show good characteristics of return loss
(< −10 dB), low mutual coupling, diversity gain and low envelope correlation coefficient (ECC)
(< 0.5) throughout both frequency bands. This MIMO antenna is suitable for portable ultra-
wideband and X-band applications.

1. INTRODUCTION
MIMO technology is commonly utilized in Ultra-wideband and wideband systems to prevent the
outcomes of multipath fading. The usage of MIMO systems is for surging the channel capacity
which allows various users to use the several services simultaneously [1]. Recently, MIMO tech-
nologies have great interest of researchers, it is because the demands of the higher data transfer
rate, rising channel capacity and also elevated data throughput. MIMO systems need low mu-
tual coupling between the elements [2, 3]. The different types of techniques are being used by
researchers to accomplish better isolation between the elements such as electromagnetic-bandgap
(E.B.G) structures, split-ring-resonator (S.R.R) structures, neutralization line and D.G.S [4, 5].
Several studies have been done to minimize the overall dimension of MIMO antenna, low mutual
coupling between elements and frequency bandwidth. In two element MIMO antenna [6] the tree-
like structure on the ground plane is used to achieve higher isolation. However, the size of the
antenna is 35 × 40 mm2 which is relatively large. In [7], wideband MIMO antenna with meandered
strip feed has been designed, a T-shaped element is inserted to the ground plane which results low
mutual coupling (< −13 dB). The overall dimension is 50 × 100 mm2 with single frequency band
that is quite large for Ultra-wideband antenna.
In this paper, a compact 2-elements MIMO antenna has been presented and is found to be
useful for Ultra-wideband and X-band applications. The proposed antenna is composed of 2 planar
monopole antenna elements having pie shaped slot structure and placed orthogonally to one another
to accomplish the ultra-wideband isolation among them. At the back of the designed MIMO
antenna, it has two reduced defected ground planes having T and L shaped stubs connected to
ground planes separately. It provides low mutual coupling between two ports with good fractional
bandwidth. The simulated MIMO antenna can be used for S (2–4 GHz), C (4–8 GHz) and X
(8–12 GHz) band applications. The proposed design has good performance parameters.
The paper consists of four sections. First section is the introduction. The second section
describes the antenna design. Results and discussion is made in the third section. The fourth
section is the conclusion.
2. ANTENNA DESIGN
A 2 element MIMO antenna for dual band applications has been designed. The antenna is designed
on FR4 substrate having dimensions 26 mm × 40 mm with thickness of substrate as 1.6 mm. The
relative-permittivity of proposed substrate is 4.4, and also the dielectric-loss-tangent of substrate
is 0.02. Front layer of the designed antenna is displayed in Figure 1(a). It consists of two radi-
ating patch having pie shaped slots structure inside the patch. The two antennas are designed
orthogonally to each other which provide low mutual coupling between two antenna elements.
Whereas, the back layer of the MIMO antenna is shown in Figure 1(b), which consists of two
reduced defected ground planes with T and L-shaped stubs. These are used to accomplish good
isolation, fractional bandwidth, diversity gain and envelope-correlation-coefficient (ECC). In this

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2017 Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium — Fall (PIERS — FALL), Singapore, 19–22 November

(a) (b)

Figure 1: Geometries of designed antenna. (a) Front layer and (b) back layer.

design, the 50 ohm microstrip line feed is used to excite the antenna. Different parameters of
proposed MIMO antenna are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Antenna parameters.

Length and width (L & W ) Dimension (mm)

L W 26 40
L1 W1 10 10
L2 W2 9 1.8
L3 W3 1 6
L4 W4 14 6
L5 W5 3.5 4
L6 W6 7 3

3. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The two elements MIMO antenna is designed and simulated by using the software HFSS (High-
Frequency-Structural-Simulator) Version 13. The proposed antenna is shown in Figures 1(a) and
(b). The simulated S11 and S22 parameters vs frequencies (GHz) are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Simulated S parameters of designed antenna.

The simulated S11 parameter of Antenna 1 demonstrates two impedance-bandwidths such as

2.82 GHz to 8.21 GHz and 9.8 to 12.42 GHz. The obtained bands have fractional bandwidth of 98%
and 31% and can be used for ultra-wideband and X-band respectively. Both bands have acceptable
level of return loss (S11 < −10 dB).

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 2017 Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium — Fall (PIERS — FALL), Singapore, 19–22 November

Whereas Antenna 2 has wide frequency band from 2.64 GHz to 13.08 GHz for S22 is < −10 dB.
This band has a fractional bandwidth of 132% that satisfies the impedance matching requirements
for Ultra-wideband.
Moreover, the simulated mutual coupling between 2 input elements (S12 ) is given in Figure 3.
It can be clearly found that the simulated isolation is less than −18 dB for 2.82 GHz–8.21 GHz
and −16 dB for 9.8 GHz–12.42 GHz. Here, the maximum value of mutual-coupling is −33.06 dB at
5.61 GHz.

Figure 3: Simulated mutual coupling (S12 ).

The E-plane and H-plane radiation pattern of simulated MIMO antenna at five resonance
frequencies 3 GHz, 6.81 GHz, 7 GHz, 10 GHz and 12.42 GHz are presented in Figures 4(a) and (b).
It is depicted that the radiation patterns are found to be nearly Omni-directional at 3 GHz. At
12.42 GHz frequency, antenna 1 and antenna 2 have multidirectional radiation pattern in E-plane as
well as H-plane. While, in other frequencies (6.81 GHz, 7 GHz and 10 GHz), the radiation pattern
in E-plane and H-plane are wide beam with high front to back ratio.

(a) (b)

Figure 4: Radiation-pattern at 3, 6.81, 7, 10 and 12.42 GHz. (a) E-plane, (b) H-plane.

The 3D radiation pattern of antenna (both port 1 and port 2) is given in Figures 5(a) and (b).
It has been observed that when port 1 is excited, the antenna radiates in ±x axis whereas, when
port 2 is excited, the antenna radiates in −y axis that results higher isolation between two elements.

Figures 6(a) and (b) reveal the current distribution of the proposed antenna. Without using the
defective ground structure (DGS), when port 1 is active then no current flows to the port 2 element
that means there is negligible amount of overlapping between two elements. The same effect can
be noticed when port 2 is excited.
In case of MIMO application, ECC is one of the important metric of antenna diversity. The

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2017 Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium — Fall (PIERS — FALL), Singapore, 19–22 November

(a) (b)

Figure 5: 3D radiation pattern of the designed MIMO. (a) port-1 (b) port-2 is excited.

(a) (b)

Figure 6: Current distributions. (a) port-1 and (b)port-2 is excited.

ECC is employed to analysis the behavior of the MIMO antenna. Figure 7 exhibits the simulated
ECC of the designed two element antenna. The obtained value of simulated ECC is 0.0001 which
is much below than threshold value that is 0.5 [11]. It is calculated by using the formula mentioned
in [13] and [15] as
|S11 ∗ S12 + S21 ∗ S22 |2
ρe = (1)
(1 − |S11 |2 − |S21 |2 ) (1 − |S22 |2 − |S12 |2 )

Figure 7: Simulated Envelope Correlation Coefficient (ECC) of MIMO antenna.

Table 2 shows the parameter responsible for diversity gain of the MIMO antenna at different
frequencies. This provides the relation between apparent diversity gain (Gapp ) and correlation
coefficient (ρe ). It is calculated by following formula [12–14]:
Gapp = 10 ∗ ρe (2)
where 10 = max. Apparent Diversity Gain (A.D.G) at the probability level (1%) with selection
combining. 
ρe = 1 − |0.99 ∗ ρe |2 (3)

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Table 2: Diversity gain.

Envelope-Correlation-Coefficient Diversity Gain

Frequency (GHz)
(ECC) (1%) (dB)
6.81 0.0000 10
12.42 0.0001 9.999999

Table 3 shows the comparison study between various parameters of proposed MIMO antenna
with other reported MIMO antennas in term of size, bandwidth and isolation. The following table
demonstrates comparable performance of proposed antenna.

Table 3: Comparison of various parameters of MIMO antenna.

Ref. Size of the antenna (mm2 ) Bandwidth (GHz) Isolation

[6] 35 × 40 3.1–10.6 < −16 dB
[7] 50 × 100 1.79–3.77 < −13 dB
[8] 100 × 65 0.9/1.8/2.6 < −16 dB
[9] 90 × 40 2.4–4.2 < −17 dB
This work 26 × 40 2.82–8.21/9.8–12.42 < −18 dB/ < −16 dB

4. CONCLUSION
A compact two-element MIMO antenna has been designed and simulated. By using pie shaped
slot structure, low mutual coupling has been obtained between two elements. As a results, the
simulated MIMO antenna with the features of compact size, low ECC (< 0.5) and diversity gain
provides adequate performance. This MIMO antenna can be used for ultra wideband (UWB) and
X-band applications.
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