Design of Asymmetric Metamaterial 8-Circular Element Array Antenna for 5G MIMO Applications

Abstract

A new high gain MIMO array antenna with limited side lobe level between 27.5 and 28.5 GHz is modeled for 5G WLAN applications. The modeled configuration involves two-port MIMO with 8-element array antenna printed on a Rogers RT Duroid-5880 dielectric material. To enhance the antenna’s radiation characteristics, each element in the radiator is excited using corporate inset feeding. The proposed model operates well in the bandwidth of 27.5 to 28.5 GHz, resonating at 28 GHz with a return loss of − 40 dB. For an array configuration, the proposed MIMO array radiator exhibits better limited side lobe level of − 7 dBi (left) and − 4 dBi (right). The MIMO array antenna with a total footprint of 123 × 61 × 0.8 mm³ offers 14 dBi gain in the operating bandwidth. Since the model is configured to be a MIMO antenna, the MIMO attributes such as isolation, TARC, diversity gain, and correlation parameters are analyzed and estimated to be around − 17.25 dB, − 24 dB, 10 dB, and 0.006, respectively, over the band of interest. The proposed model is fabricated and experimentally validated for its simulation results and is found to be in good agreement with simulation results.