A Compact Semi-circular Slot MIMO Antenna with Enhanced Isolation for Sub-6 GHz 5G WLAN Applications

In this paper, a novel compact semi-circular slot (SCS) 2 x 2 MIMO antenna is presented for 5G NR sub-6 GHz applications with high isolation. The proposed antenna consists of a semi-circular slot in ground plane, U-shaped stub, and 50-ohm microstrip feed line. The novelty of this paper are the Semi-Circular Slot acts a radiator, the port isolation is enhanced using a simple conductor strip as a neutralization line, very compact in size, low ECC, and good impedance matching. The overall size of the proposed SCS MIMO antenna is 16 mm x 21 mm, and FR4 substrate is used with thickness of 1.6 mm The two SCS antenna elements are separated by edge-to-edge distance of 1mm (= 0.019 lambda(0)). The proposed compact MIMO antenna design is simulated using Ansys HFSS. To validate SCS MIMO antenna, a prototype was fabricated and tested. The measured results are attained at 5.5 GHz with isolation greater than 25dB, impedance bandwidth (S11 < -10 dB) covers from 5.10 GHz to 5.80 GHz with return loss of - 39.5 dB. The MIMO antenna parameters, ECC, CCL, TARC, and MEG are studied, and the values are obtained within acceptable limits. The measured and simulated antenna results are almost similar. This compact MIMO antenna is suitable for 5G communications in sub-6 GHz wifi-5 band applications.