Characteristic Mode Analysis and Design of Wide Band MIMO Antenna Consisting of Metamaterial Unit Cell

This paper presents a full wave simulation and characteristic mode-based design of a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna at 5.8 GHz for wireless local area network applications. The driven analysis comprises two antennas that are placed orthogonal to each other. A metamaterial unit structure in the form of a rectangular loop resonator is placed around the antenna element to reduce the electromagnetic interference and to increase the isolation between the two monopoles. A characteristic mode technique is employed to find out the dominant mode of the proposed antenna without a feeding port. It was revealed that mode 1 was the dominant mode among the three modes used. The MIMO antenna is constructed and measured using a vector network analyzer. A good isolation of less than 25 dB was attained with a wide impedance bandwidth of 65.5%.