Near Zero Parameter Metamaterial Inspired Superstrate for Isolation Improvement in MIMO Wireless Application

In this paper, near zero parameter based meta-material superstrate is presented for mutual coupling reduction in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna. The proposed design offers a peak isolation of 38 dB with edge-separation of 0.042 lambda(0) at resonating frequency. To verify the simulations results, a prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and experimentally measured. The two elements MIMO is designed with measured impedance bandwidth of 5.6 to 5.95 GHz with a peak measured gain of 7.4 dBi and efficiency above 95 %. The measurement established an isolation enhancement of 30 dB with minimum correlation coefficient of 0.05 within operating band. The proposed method offers a good design technique for high gain and closely packed MIMO antenna system for WLAN applications.