Metasurface-based bandwidth and isolation enhancement for compact H-plane coupled antennas

Abstract A simple metasurface (MS) composed of a square metal ring and four extended metal strips is designed to simultaneously enhance the bandwidth and isolation of H-plane coupled microstrip patch antenna array in this paper. By adding the MS above the patch array, a new resonance is formed to increase the working bandwidth and the coupling between the antenna array is largely depressed to enhance the isolation property. An antenna array with MS is simulated, fabricated and measured. The simulated and measured results are in good agreements. Measured results indicate that the bandwidth with S 11 ⩽ −10 dB is broadened by 8.1% compared with the original coupled antennas. In addition, within the working band, the isolation level is better than −20 dB, and the maximum mutual coupling reduction reaches 39.6 dB at 5.19 GHz, performing an excellent wideband decoupling effect. Moreover, the proposed method has been extended to large antenna arrays, implying that it can be widely used in multiple-input multiple-output or the wireless Rx/Tx system.