Ceramic Superstrate-Based Decoupling Method for Two Closely Packed Antennas With Cross-Polarization Suppression

A ceramic superstrate-based decoupling method (CSDM) is proposed to reduce the mutual coupling between two closely packed dipole antennas while maintaining cross-polarization suppression. Compared with other superstrate-based methods, this proposed method can effectively reduce the mutual coupling between the antennas without using any periodic structures on the superstrate. The ceramic superstrate is a 2 mm thin slab with a relative dielectric constant of 20.5 and is suspended over the antennas coupled in H-plane with the spacing of only 0.28 wavelength at 3.5 GHz. It is demonstrated by both simulation and measurement that the isolation between two dipole antennas can be improved from 10 to more than 25 dB within the operation band while their reflection coefficients remain to be below -10 dB after the ceramic superstrate is introduced. The radiation patterns of the antenna maintain stable at different operation frequencies within the band of interest and the peak gain has increased by around 1.5 dB. Meanwhile, the total efficiency is enhanced by about 15% and the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) between the two antennas is reduced from 0.7 to 0.4.