Mutual Coupling Suppression in Wearable MIMO Antenna for On/Off-Body WBAN Applications

Abstract

Abstract A 2x1 wearable multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with line patch as mutual coupling suppression is presented. The proposed MIMO antenna is based on a simple rectangular structure that works at 2.45 GHz frequency. The patches are designed using ShieldIt textiles and are placed to a very closed (0.1λ) gap. The results show that the suppression in the mutual coupling of 5 dB (from -20 dB to -25dB), reduced by 25% after the line patch is inserted in between patches. On a positive note, an improvement in the antenna gain, from 4.4 dB to 4.7dB is achieved. On top of that, the performance of the reflection coefficient (S11) and the antenna impedance bandwidth is preserved. Important diversity performance parameter for MIMO antenna such as ECC, diversity gain and MEG results are found to be in an acceptable limit