A MIMO ANTENNA DECOUPLING NETWORK COMPOSED OF INVERTERS AND COUPLED SPLIT RING RESONATORS

A decoupling network for a pair of strongly coupled MIMO antennas is presented. The decoupling network is composed of two inverters and two split ring resonators (SRRs) that are also coupled. By properly transforming the mutual admittance of the original coupled antennas and properly designing the coupling between the two SRRs, more than 20 dB isolation between the two antennas can be achieved while their respective matching performances remain good. To validate the concept, a microstrip decoupling network is designed and implemented for a pair of wideband printed monopole antenna elements. Measurement results have demonstrated that nearly 10% bandwidth for 20 dB isolation can be achieved. Measured radiation patterns have demonstrated a significant reduction of the correlation coefficient, which makes the proposed technique a promising candidate for both current and future generations of MIMO-enabled mobile terminals.