A complementary Sierpinski gasket fractal antenna array for wireless MIMO portable devices

This research work reports the design and development of a novel complementary Sierpinski gasket fractal microstrip antenna array to achieve a good impedance bandwidth and hence support high data rates for 4G/5G MIMO applications. The proposed array is a compact structure (136 mm × 136 mm) designed with complimentary Sierpinski gasket fractal up to two iterations and has a defected ground to improve the antenna's performance. The antenna performance reports an 8.2% bandwidth at the center frequency of 4.94 GHz (4.7434‐5.1514 GHz), a simulated diversity gain of 9.99 allows the proposed array to be well suitable for proposed applications and a directivity of around 5.8 dBi suits good range characteristics. The array designing and optimization is carried out with 3D EM tool CST MWS V'14 using perfect boundary approximations. A simulated low value of envelope correlation coefficient (0.04) indicates that the two antennas in the array provide least interference to each other while radiating. The measured S11 results on a VNA E 5071C show a close match with the simulated results. Thus a compact array size with good bandwidth, radiation characteristics, low ECC and a high diversity gain allow the antenna array to be well suitable for portable MIMO 4G/5G wireless applications specifically for C band and military applications.