Surface Wave Reduction in Antenna Arrays Using Metasurface Inclusion for MIMO and SAR Systems

Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad; Virdee, Bal S.; See, Chan Hwang; Abd-Alhameed, Raed A.; Falcone, Francisco; Limiti, Ernesto

Abstract

An effective method is presented for suppressing mutual coupling between adjacent radiating elements which is based on metasurface isolation for MIMO and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. This is achieved by choking surface current waves induced over the patch antenna by inserting a cross-shaped metasurface structure between the radiating elements. Each arm of the cross-shaped structure constituting the metasurface is etched with meander-line slot (MLS). Effectiveness of the metasurface is demonstrated for a2×2antenna array that operates over six frequency sub-bands in X, Ku and K-bands. With the proposed technique, the maximum improvement achieved in attenuating mutual coupling between neighbouring antennas is: 8.5 dB (8-8.4 GHz), 28 dB (9.6-10.8 GHz), 27 dB (11.7-12.6 GHz), 7.5 dB (13.4-14.2 GHz), 13 dB (16.5-16.8 GHz) and 22.5 dB (18.5-20.3 GHz). Furthermore, with the proposed technique (i) minimum center-to-center separation between the radiating elements can be reduced to 0.26λ0, where λ0 is 8.0 GHz; (ii) use of ground-plane or defected ground structures are unnecessary; (iii) use of short-circuited via-holes are avoided; (iv) it eliminates the issue with poor front-to-back ratio; and (v) it can be applied to existing arrays retrospectively.

Citation

Alibakhshikenari, M., Virdee, B. S., See, C. H., Abd-Alhameed, R. A., Falcone, F., & Limiti, E. (2019). Surface Wave Reduction in Antenna Arrays Using Metasurface Inclusion for MIMO and SAR Systems. Radio Science, 54(11), 1067-1075. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RS006871

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 2, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Oct 19, 2019
• Publication Date: 2019-11
• Deposit Date: Oct 14, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 14, 2019
• Print ISSN: 0048-6604
• Electronic ISSN: 1944-799X
• Publisher: American Geophysical Union
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 54
• Issue: 11
• Pages: 1067-1075
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RS006871
• Keywords: Metasurface isolator, MIMO, synthetic-aperture radar, Meander line slot (MLS), Mutual coupling, Antenna array
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2225545