Highly isolated electrically compact UWB MIMO antenna for wireless communications applications

A multiple-input multiple-output Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) antenna with a compact size of 0.8 lambda x 0.7 lambda is proposed. The presented structure is constituted with patch geometry on a planar surface. The radiator consists of three counter U-shaped conducting strips united with a patch structure where two are positioned nearby and the third geometry covers the remaining conducting strips. A corrugated design has been created on a ground plane in which zigzag pattern slots are engineered to receive high isolation of more than 20 dB. The configured antenna radiates over a wide frequency spectrum of 3.10 GHz-11.85 GHz. It offers a fractional bandwidth of 195 % with a gain of 2.80 dBi, 3.08 dBi, and 2.72 dBi for targeted resonances. The antenna radiation patterns and MIMO diversity parameters are also presented. The acceptable values of ECC (<0.05 abs), MEG (-6 dB to -8 dB), CCL (<0.02 bits/sec/Hz) were found. The fabricated model was tested inside an anechoic chamber environment to receive the measured response with optimum accuracy through multiple iterations. The measured response shows a strong correlation with numerically computed responses finding the presented antenna suitable for WiMAX, WLAN (max protocol) and radar applications.