In this article, a novel metamaterial inspired UWB/multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna is presented. The proposed antenna consists of a circular metallic part which formed the patch and a partial ground plane. Metamaterial structure is loaded at the top side of the patches for bandwidth improvement and mutual coupling reduction. The proposed antenna provides UWB mode of operation from 2.6–12 GHz. The characteristic mode theory is applied to examine each physical mode of the antenna aperture and access its many physical parameters without exciting the antenna. Mode 2 was the dominant mode among the three modes used. Considering the almost inevitable presence of mutual coupling effects within compact multiport antennas, we developed an additional decoupling technique in the form of perturbed stubs, which leads to a mutual coupling reduction of less than 20 dB. Finally, different performance parameters of the system, such as envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), channel capacity loss (CCL), diversity gain, total active reflection coefficient (TARC), mean effective gain (MEG), surface current, and radiation pattern, are presented. A prototype antenna is fabricated and measured for validation.

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%.

The research presents mutual coupling reduction between UWB-MIMO antenna elements using stub loading technique. The proposed 2 × 2 UWB antenna geometry consists of two circular-shaped monopole radiators with a partial ground for perfect impedance matching. Stubs of 20 mm × 0.2 mm are inserted between the two antenna elements in the ground plane to improve the isolation. The decoupling stub leads to a mutual coupling reduction of less than 20 dB. The farfield measurement at a selected frequency of 10 GHz confirms an omnidirectional radiation pattern. Different MIMO antenna metric such as channel capacity loss (CCL), mean effective gain (MEG), total active reflection coefficient (TARC), envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), and surface current are presented. Details of the design considerations and the simulation and measurement results are presented and discussed. The proposed MIMO antenna array can be well suited for UWB applications.