Received April 27, 2021, accepted May 7, 2021, date of publication May 13, 2021, date of current version

May 24, 2021.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3079965

Isolation Enhancement of a Metasurface-Based

MIMO Antenna Using Slots and Shorting Pins
MD. ABU SUFIAN 1, (Graduate Student Member, IEEE), NIAMAT HUSSAIN 1 ,
HUSSAIN ASKARI 1 , SEONG GYOON PARK2 , KOOK SUN SHIN3 , AND NAM KIM 1
1 School of Information and Communication Engineering, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju 28644, South Korea
2 Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Kongju National University, Gongju 314701, South Korea
3 FITI Testing & Research Institute, Cheongju 28115, South Korea

Corresponding author: Nam Kim ([email protected])

This work was supported in part by the Institute for Information and Communication Technology Promotion (IITP) (A study on public
health and safety in a complex EMF environment) under Grant 2019-0-00102, and in part by the Radio Research Agency (RRA)
(Development of rapid antenna measurement technique for antennas with new radio technology).

ABSTRACT In this paper, a metasurface-based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with

high isolation between antenna elements is presented. The main patch radiator is sandwiched between
a metasurface and a ground plane to achieve performance enhancement. The fabricated single element
antenna has a compact size of 0.85λ0 × 0.85λ0 × 0.038λ0 . The antenna exhibits a wideband operational
bandwidth from 3.27 to 3.82 GHz for |S11 | < −10, which corresponds to a fractional bandwidth of 15.5%.
Moreover, stable radiation patterns with a peak gain of 8.1 dBi are also achieved across the operating band.
The proposed single element antenna is characterized for 2 × 2 MIMO system by translating each antenna
element orthogonal to each other. A decoupling structure consisting of slots and metallic strip with shorting
pins is used to improve the isolation between the MIMO elements. The shorting pins connect the metallic
strips (located between MIMO elements) on the metasurface and ground plane. These slots on ground plane
and shorting pins affect the electromagnetic field distribution and consequently reduce the mutual coupling.
The fabricated MIMO antenna has a compact size of 1.75λ0 × 1.75λ0 × 0.038λ0 . The proposed 4 port
(2 × 2) MIMO antenna provides 15.9% of 10 dB impedance bandwidth from 3.3 to 3.87 GHz with a peak
gain of 8.72 dBi. Moreover, the proposed MIMO antenna offers excellent diversity performance, isolation
between antenna elements is very high (>32dB), ECC is lower than 0.001, and diversity gain is 9.99 dB
very close to the ideal value of 10dB. Owing to these features, the proposed MIMO antenna can be a good
candidate for 5G Sub-6 GHz (n78 band) smart devices and sensors.

INDEX TERMS Isolation enhancement, decoupling structure, slots, shorting pins, MIMO antenna,
n78 band, sub-6 GHz, fifth-generation (5G), metasurface-based antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION 5G mid-band because it can carry a large amount of data while

Fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology aims to provide also being able to transmit a long distance. For sub-6 GHz
higher peak data rates of multi-Gbps, ultra-low latency, huge 5G communications systems, 3.3 – 3.8 GHz (n78 band) is
network capacity, higher availability, and a more unified user the most used frequency range all over the world as shown
experience [1]. Since 5G is seamlessly connected through in Fig. 1 [4].
modern technologies such as smart homes, smart factories, The MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) antennas are
virtual reality, telemedicine, and automobiles, it is expected considered as a better candidate for 5G applications. The
to bring a revolution in our daily lives [2]. Federal Com- use of MIMO antenna is an effective way to improve link
munications Commission (FCC) classifies 5G spectrum into reliability and increase the spectral efficiency of radio com-
4 bands [3]. The frequency spectrum from 1 – 6 GHz, munication [5]. The MIMO techniques enable the transmis-
is the mid-band spectrum, which is the ideal choice for the sion of data over multiple channels and thus increase the
channel capacity without additional power requirements [6].
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and MIMO antennas can be used for achieving diversity perfor-
approving it for publication was Tutku Karacolak . mance and mitigating the effects of multipath fading [7].

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The antenna in [20], is designed for 5G mm-wave applica-

tions, and to achieve the performance enhancements both
the patch radiator and the periodic metallic plate metasur-
face are printed on the same dielectric layer. In [22]–[24],
double-layered metasurface-based antennas for performance
improvements especially in terms of gain and bandwidth are
presented. This work is based on our previous work [22],
where the concept of patch antenna sandwiched between a
metasurface and a finite ground plane for 3.5 GHz application
FIGURE 1. The global 5G sub-6 GHz mid-band spectrum [4]. was presented.
In this article, a metasurface-based multiple-input
multiple-output antenna is presented for 5G sub-6 GHz
One of the main challenges in MIMO antenna design is the (n78 band) applications. The distinguishing feature of this
isolation enhancement. Various types of isolation enhance- design is high isolation between MIMO antenna elements
ment techniques have been reported [8]–[19]. By adopting while maintaining high gain and wideband characteristics.
different decoupling elements, the mutual coupling between In this work, a decoupling structure consisting of slots and
antenna elements can be reduced [8]–[10], such as parasitic metallic strips with shorting pins is proposed to improve the
monopole [8], floating parasitic [9], and tree-like structure isolation between the MIMO elements. By properly design-
on the ground plane [10]. However, the antenna configura- ing the configuration of the slots and shorting pins, high gain
tions in [9] and [10] are more complex and occupy much and high isolation between antenna elements are achieved.
space. The T-shaped metallic strip between two antennas CST Microwave Studio is used as a tool for doing all the
and rhombic slot structure in the ground plane is used to antenna simulations. The rest of the paper organization is as
improve isolation [11]. The mutual coupling between patch follows. In section 2, the antenna geometry of the proposed
radiators can also be reduced by using a polarization conver- single element antenna, its design procedure, performance
sion isolator [12]. Whereas, polarization conversion isolator enhancement techniques, simulated and measured results
is placed between patch radiators which effectively reduces are presented. While the design of the proposed MIMO
the influence of mutual coupling on the direction of the main antenna configuration, isolation enhancement, and its diver-
beam. In [13], a pair of open-ended circular parasitic struc- sity parameters along with its performance comparison with
tures with a square-ring slot radiator is embedded, in order other works is discussed in section 3 and section 4. Finally,
to reduce the mutual coupling of the antenna elements. the proposed work is concluded in section 5.
Another effective way to reduce mutual coupling between
MIMO antenna elements is the electromagnetic bandgap II. DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE SINGLE
(EBG) [14]–[16]. EBG structures placed between MIMO ELEMENT ANTENNA
antenna elements, cancel the undesired resonance between The antenna geometry and design procedure of the single
antenna elements. Therefore, the mutual coupling between element antenna are explained in this section. Furthermore,
antenna elements is reduced and high isolation is achieved. the simulated and measured results including |S11 |, radiation
The uni-conductor electromagnetic bandgap (UC-EBG) peri- efficiency, gain, and radiation patterns are studied in detail.
odic cells are placed between antennas which act as barriers
for surface waves to provide high isolation [14]. Also in [15], A. ANTENNA GEOMETRY
fractal shape EBG structure has been considered to reduce The geometry and configuration of the proposed single ele-
the mutual coupling for the array antenna design. While a ment antenna are shown in Fig. 2. The antenna consists of
multi-layered electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure is a radiating patch fed by a microstrip line, a ground plane,
incorporated into a MIMO antenna to reduce unexpected a metasurface, and two identical Rogers RO4003C substrates
mutual coupling between antenna elements [16]. In addition, (εr = 3.55 and tanδ = 0.0027) with the thickness of
other isolation enhancement techniques are mentioned in the h1 = h2 = 1.524 mm. The microstrip line is fed by
literature [17]–[19]. The metamaterial superstrate structure a 50- coaxial cable. The radiating patch is a rectangular
and mutual decoupling structure are used to reduce the mutual patch with the dimension of W × L, whose lower ends are
coupling [17]. A two-layered 3-D metamaterial structure truncated with a semi-circle. The microstrip feed line has the
connected by shorting pins has been proposed and it has width and length of Wf and Lf , respectively. The proposed
been integrated into a MIMO antenna to reduce the mutual metasurface is a uniform array of 4 × 4 metallic square cells.
coupling between two rectangle patch antennas [18]. While, Each cell has a width of m and the gap between the nearest
near-field resonators (NFR) are used to enhance the isolation cells is g. The metasurface is printed on the top of the upper
between closely packed patch antennas in [19]. substrate, while the radiating patch is printed on the upper
Recently, metasurface (MTS) has been intensively stud- side of the lower substrate, and on the other side, the ground is
ied and utilized to improve the performance of microstrip printed. The patch is fed by the SMA connector by connecting
patch antennas, especially bandwidth and gain [20]–[24]. the inner pin of the connector to the microstrip feed line that

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FIGURE 2. Geometry and configuration of the proposed single element

antenna: (a) side view (b) top view of metasurface, and (c) top view of the
patch.

passes through the lower substrate, while the outer part of

the connector is soldered with the ground. The antenna has
an overall size of 71.6 mm × 71.6 mm × 3.118 mm which
corresponds to 0.85λ0 × 0.85λ0 × 0.038λ0 , where λ0 is the
center operating frequency. The optimized parameters for the
antenna are as: a = 71.6 mm, L = 19 mm, W = 14.5 mm,
h1 = h2 = 1.524 mm, R = 5 mm, Lf = 11.6 mm, Wf = FIGURE 3. Simulated results of the proposed single element antenna
with and without metasurface: (a) |S11 |, (b) gain and efficiency.
3 mm, s = 2 mm, m = 16.4 mm, P = 17.6 mm, g = 1.2 mm.

B. DESIGN PROCEDURE AND PERFORMANCE without metasurface structure, the antenna’s impedance
ENHANCEMENT matching (|S11 | < −10dB) is from 3.45 to 3.53 GHz cor-
The proposed double-layer sub-6 GHz 5G antenna based on responds to a fractional bandwidth of 2.3% with respect
metasurface is evolved from a microstrip-line fed rectangular to the center frequency. With metasurface structure, good
patch antenna chosen to operate at the desired frequency impedance matching (|S11 | < −10dB) is obtained from
of fr ≈ 3.5 GHz. The antenna is fed from the bottom 3.27 to 3.82 GHz corresponds to a fractional bandwidth
side through a coaxial feed. Without metasurface dimension of 15.5%. By using the metasurface structure, the bandwidth
(W and L) of the initial patch may be predicted as [25]: is increased by 13.2%. Without the metasurface structure,
s the peak gain in operating frequency is 6.3 dBi and radiation
c 2 efficiency is less than 83%. While with metasurface structure,
W = (1) the peak gain in operating frequency is 8.1 dBi, and radiation
2fr γr + 1
c efficiency is more than 92% (up to 96%).
L = √ −21L (2) The performance improvement of patch radiator using
2fr γ reff
metasurface can be explained by surface wave propagation.
where c is the light velocity in free space, γr is the dielectric The surface waves propagating on the metasurface generate
constant of the substrate, γreff is the effective dielectric con- additional resonances. These additional resonances are uti-
stant of the patch and 1L is the extended incremental length lized effectively to increase bandwidth and gain, which have
of the patch. been thoroughly investigated in [20], [24], [26], [27].
The optimized parameters for the antenna without meta-
surface are as: a = 71.6 mm, L = 23 mm, W = 21 mm, C. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
h1 = 1.524 mm, R = 5 mm, Lf = 13 mm, Wf = 0.4 A prototype of the proposed double-layer metasurface-based
mm, s = 2mm. The metasurface layer printed on another wideband antenna is fabricated and measured to verify the
substrate and placed on top of the radiating patch as in Fig. 2, design concept. The photographs of its parts of assembly
in order to improve the antenna performance. The perfor- and the fabricated antenna, and the far-field measurement
mance, especially operating bandwidth, and gain of the patch setup are shown in Fig. 4. With the help of an adhesive
antenna are improved by utilizing periodic structure as MTS liquid, the MTS layer is directly stacked on the patch antenna.
shown in Fig. 3. It is observed from the simulation result that A 50- 2.92mm K-connector is connected carefully with

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FIGURE 4. Photographs of the (a) fabricated single element antenna and

its parts of the assembly, and (b) far-field measurements setup.

the feed line. PNA network analyzer (Agilent Technologies

E8364B) was used to measure S-parameter in open-air con- FIGURE 5. Results of the proposed single element antenna (a) |S11 |,
(b) gain and radiation efficiency.
dition and the far-field radiation performance is measured and
characterized by a commercial company [28] in an anechoic
chamber. A well calibrated standard gain horn antenna is used
as a transmit (TX) antenna and the prototype is measured as a 3) RADIATION PATTERNS
receiving (RX) antenna. Amplifiers are used to supply stable The simulated and measured radiation patterns of the sin-
power reception. At the time of testing, the antenna is rotated gle element antenna in xoz plane (H -plane) and yoz plane
to measure the radiation intensity at different orientations. (E-plane) at different operating frequencies are shown
In general, a good agreement between the simulated and in Fig. 6. The antenna offers stable and symmetrical radiation
measured results is observed. patterns having low side-lobe and back-lobe levels at all the
investigated frequencies of 3.3, 3.5, and 3.7 GHz in the pass-
band. The antenna shows a unidirectional radiation pattern
1) REFLECTION COEFFICIENT (|S11 |)
with low back radiations.
The simulated and measured return loss (|S11 |) of the single
element antenna with metasurface is shown in Fig. 5(a). III. MIMO ANTENNA DESIGN AND ISOLATION
Simulated and measured results show that the proposed single ENHANCEMENT
element antenna has a wide 10 dB impedance bandwidth A. MIMO ANTENNA WITHOUT DECOUPLING STRUCTURE
of 15.5% (3.27 – 3.82 GHz). The wideband characteristics The geometry and configuration of the MIMO antenna with-
are obtained for the successful implementation of the meta- out decoupling structure is shown in Fig. 7, which consists
surface. of 4-single element antennas placed orthogonal to each other.
The MIMO antenna is designed by translating the single-
2) RADIATION EFFICIENCY AND GAIN element, z-axis 90◦ , and other axes (x and y-axis) value of
Radiation efficiency and gain of the proposed single element (2 × m) + g + i with repetition factor three. The optimized
antenna are shown in Fig. 5(b). The measured maximum parameters for the antenna are as: A = 146 mm, L = 19 mm,
value of the achieved gain is 8.1 dBi. Again the bandwidth W = 14.5 mm, h1 = h2 = 1.524 mm, R = 5 mm,
and gain are increased due to the usage of MTS as a secondary Lf = 11.6 mm, Wf = 3 mm, P = 17.6 mm, m =
radiator for useful extra resources. Due to connector/cable 16.4 mm, g = 1.2 mm. This antenna offers low isolation
losses used during measurement, the measured gain and radi- and low gain, especially at higher frequency. The results are
ation efficiency are a little lower than the simulated values in shown in later section. Therefore, a reduction of coupling
the entire frequency range. between antennas is needed.

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To improve the isolation which is expressed by transmission-

coefficient, a decoupling structure consisting of slots and
shorting pins is designed. For designing the slot structure,
the copper layer is etched from the ground plane by a
width of 2.2 mm. The distance between two symmetric slots
is 5.6 mm. By using this slot structure, isolation is improved.
For further improvements, metallic strips of copper are
designed with width and length of A and i, respectively, on the
metasurface plane. Afterward, the metallic strips (located
between MIMO elements) on the metasurface are connected
to the ground plane via shorting pins through the substrates.
The radius of the shorting pins is r. The electromagnetic
field distribution is affected by these slots and shorting pins,
and consequently, the mutual coupling is reduced. The opti-
mized parameters for the proposed MIMO antenna are as:
A = 146 mm, L = 19 mm, W = 14.5 mm, h1 = h2 =
1.524 mm, R = 5 mm, Lf = 11.6 mm, Wf = 3 mm,
s = 2 mm, Es = 57.9 mm, P = 17.6 mm, m = 16.4 mm,
g = 1.2 mm, i = 2.8 mm, j = 3 mm, k = 68 mm, d =
2.2 mm, D = 10 mm and shorting pin radius r = 0.75 mm.
The isolation enhancement for different antenna structures
is shown in Fig. 9. The transmission coefficient for adja-
cent antennas, |S12 |, |S14 |, |S23 |, and |S34 | show identical
curves. Moreover, the |S13 | and |S24 | curves are the same
with lower values, since these antennas are located at the
diagonal positions having longer distance among them com-
pared to other adjacent antennas. The transmission coefficient
for the adjacent antennas (|S12 |, |S14 |, |S23 |, and |S34 |) is
FIGURE 6. Radiation pattern of the proposed single element antenna shown in Fig. 9(a). It can be seen that without decoupling
with metasurface for different frequencies.
structure the average isolation is 18 dB and it suffers from
strong mutual coupling at a higher frequency. By using
the slot structure, the mutual coupling is reduced signifi-
cantly in the upper-frequency region. MIMO antenna with
the shorting pins shows similar results. While the proposed
decoupling structure (combination of both slots and shorting
pins) offers a significant isolation improvement at the entire
operating frequency. For diagonal antennas (|S13 | and |S24 |),
the transmission coefficient is shown in Fig. 9(b). Without
decoupling structure, the diagonal antennas show average
low isolation of 23 dB. The slot structure offers improved
isolation around 3.5 GHz. Similarly, the shorting pins reduce
the mutual coupling between antenna elements and provide
enhanced isolation at the entire operating frequency band.
Finally, the proposed decoupling structure (combination of
both slots and shorting pins), reduced the mutual coupling
significantly and very high isolation between diagonal anten-
nas is achieved at the entire frequency band. The highest
FIGURE 7. Geometry and configuration of the MIMO antenna without
isolation for MIMO antenna without decoupling structure is
decoupling structure: (a) side view (b) top view of metasurface, and 26 dB for |S12 |, |S14 |, |S23 |, and |S34 | parameters, while for
(c) ground plane. the proposed MIMO antenna with decoupling structure, this
value is reduced to 44 dB. The maximum isolation for antenna
without decoupling structure for |S13 | and |S24 | is 30 dB,
B. THE PROPOSED MIMO ANTENNA WITH DECOUPLING which is decreased to 72 dB for the proposed antenna.
STRUCTURE By analyzing the surface current distribution, the effec-
The geometry and configuration of the proposed MIMO tiveness of the decoupling structure can be observed [29].
antenna with decoupling structure is shown in Fig. 8. Fig. 10 shows the surface current distribution of the proposed

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FIGURE 8. Geometry and configuration of the proposed MIMO antenna: (a) top view of metasurface (b) top view of the patch (c) ground plane, and
(d) side view.

MIMO antenna at frequency 3.5 GHz for port-1 and port-3.

From Fig. 10(a) when port-1 is excited, it can be visualized
that without decoupling structure there is a strong current
distribution that goes from the excited patch to the neighbor-
ing patches, thus the mutual coupling is very high. On the
other hand, the strong current distribution to the adjacent
patches is stopped by the decoupling structure, and hence,
high isolation among MIMO antenna elements is achieved.
To verify the same effect of decoupling structure, we have
shown the surface current distribution for the excited port-3
in Fig. 10(b).
The gain of the proposed single element antenna and the
proposed MIMO antenna (with and without decoupling struc-
ture) are shown in Fig. 11. The measured maximum gain of
the proposed single element antenna is 8.1 dBi. However, due
to mutual coupling between the MIMO elements, the MIMO
without decoupling structure shows an unstable and low
gain compared to the single element at high frequency band
(3.5 – 4 GHz). The gain is decreased to 4 dBi due to high cor-
relation. Using decoupling structure in the proposed MIMO
antenna, mutual coupling is reduced between antenna ele-
ments and high isolation is achieved. Therefore, the proposed
MIMO antenna shows a stable and high gain with a maximum
value of 8.72 dBi. The gain of the proposed MIMO antenna
is higher than the proposed single element antenna due to the
increment of the radiating area in MIMO design. The gain
curves of MIMO antenna configurations are only for port-1. FIGURE 9. Transmission coefficient for different MIMO configuration
All other ports of the proposed MIMO antenna show almost (a) |S12 |, |S14 |, |S23 |, |S34 |, (b) |S13 |, and |S24 |.

similar performance.
The detailed insight into the antenna design method and in Fig. 12. The flowchart illustrates, how the antenna is
optimization process is summarized in the flowchart, shown constructed and what the significant design parameters play

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FIGURE 12. The design procedure and optimization of the proposed

MIMO antenna.

FIGURE 10. Surface current distribution with and without decoupling

structure of different port excitation at 3.5 GHz (a) port-1 and (b) port-3.

FIGURE 13. Photographs of the (a) fabricated MIMO antenna and its
parts of the assembly, and (b) far-field measurements setup.

in an anechoic chamber. A well-calibrated standard gain horn

antenna is used as a transmit (TX) antenna and the prototype
is measured as a receiving (RX) antenna. Amplifiers are used
FIGURE 11. Gain of the proposed antennas for different configurations. to supply stable power reception. At the time of testing,
the antenna is rotated to measure the radiation intensity at
different orientations. To show the robustness of the MIMO
a role in the optimization of the antenna’s gain and to achieve antenna system, the MIMO diversity performance in terms of
high isolation of the proposed MIMO antenna. isolation, envelope correlation coefficient, and diversity gain
are studied.
IV. PROPOSED MIMO ANTENNA RESULTS
To verify the design concept, a prototype of the proposed A. REFLECTION COEFFICIENT
MIMO antenna is fabricated and measured. Its parts of assem- The simulated and the measured reflection coefficient plots
bly and the fabricated antenna is shown in Fig. 13(a) and the of the proposed Sub-6 GHz (n78 band) MIMO antenna is
far-field measurement setup is shown in Fig. 13(b). With the shown in Fig. 14. For isolation enhancement, some parame-
help of an adhesive liquid the MTS layer is directly stacked on ters are changed in MIMO antenna, thence the MIMO anten-
the MIMO patch radiators. PNA network analyzer (Agilent nas have a little different 10 dB bandwidth than the proposed
Technologies E8364B) was used to measure S-parameter in single-element antenna. It can be seen that the antenna has
open air condition and the far-field radiation performance is a good impedance matching in a wideband frequency range
measured and characterized by a commercial company [28] starting from 3.3 to 3.87 GHz, equivalent to a fractional

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FIGURE 14. S-parameters of the proposed MIMO antenna (a) simulation FIGURE 15. Transmission coefficient of the proposed MIMO antenna
and (b) measurement. (a) simulation and (b) measurement.

S-parameters and far-field radiation respectively [20].

bandwidth of 15.9% with respect to the central operating |Sii ∗Sij + Sji ∗ Sjj |2
frequency. The antennas show almost the same reflection ρeij =  2 (3)
coefficient curves since all the antenna elements have sym- (1− |Sii |2 − Sij2 )(1− Sji  − Sjj2 )
metrical geometry and placement. A little difference in the RR 4π h i 2
measured reflection coefficients among the antenna elements | 0 REi (θ, ϕ) × REj (θ, ϕ) d|
ρeij = RR 2 2
(4)
is due to the measurement tolerances. 4π E RR 4π
0 |Ri (θ, ϕ) | d 0 |Rj (θ, ϕ) | d
E

Here, Sii is the reflection coefficient and Sij is the transmission

B. TRANSMISSION COEFFICIENT
coefficient. REi (θ, ϕ) and REj (θ, ϕ) are the three-dimensional
The transmission coefficient is expressed as the mutual radiation patterns of ith and jth antenna and  is the solid
coupling between the MIMO elements. The simulated and angle. For the proposed MIMO antenna, the ECC values
measured transmission coefficients are plotted in Fig. 15. obtained from (3) and (4) are very low (less than0.001) within
By using the proposed decoupling structure, the antennas the operating frequency. This excellent diversity performance
show a high isolation characteristic. The minimum isolation of the proposed MIMO antenna is shown in Fig. 16.
of the antennas is >32 dB and maximum isolation is 72 dB
in the entire operating bandwidth.
D. DIVERSITY GAIN (DG)
Another fundamental parameter that describes the effect of
C. ENVELOPE CORRELATION COEFFICIENT (ECC) the diversity scheme on the radiated power is the diversity
The parameter that shows how much MIMO antennas are gain (DG). In Fig. 17, the diversity gain (DG) of the proposed
independent in their individual performance, for instance, MIMO antenna is shown and computed as a function of
radiation patterns and polarization is the envelope correlation frequency using the relation in equation 5 [20].
coefficient (ECC) [30]. Equation (3) and (4) is used to com- q
pute the ECC (ρeij ) for the MIMO antenna system both the Diversity Gain = 10 1 − |ρeij |2 (5)

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TABLE 1. Comparison of the proposed MIMO antenna with state-of-the-art works.

E. COMPARISON WITH STATE-OF-THE-ART WORKS

Table 1 shows the performance comparison of the proposed
MIMO antenna with the existing similar MIMO microstrip
patch structures with high isolation. The comparison is made
with respect to different performance metrics including iso-
lation enhancement techniques, bandwidth, peak gain, radia-
tion efficiency, minimum isolation, and maximum isolation.
Many appealing designs of MIMO antenna with isolation
improvement techniques were reported in [12-19].
It can be seen that decoupling structure can lead to a better
maximum value of isolation, particularly [12], [14], [15], [19].
However, these designs suffer from narrow bandwidth.
In comparison, by operating bandwidth with a competitive
isolation feature, our architecture is dominant. In addition,
FIGURE 16. Envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) of the proposed MIMO the proposed MIMO antenna offers a very high radiation
antenna. efficiency with a high gain, while maintaining high isolation
between antenna elements.

V. CONCLUSION
A metasurface-based multiple-input multiple-output antenna
(MIMO antenna) with wideband operation is presented for
5G Sub-6 GHz (n78 band) applications. The antenna is sand-
wiched between an 8×8 metallic square cell metasurface and
a finite ground plane. Rectangular patch fed by a microstrip
line is the main radiating element, whose lower ends are
truncated with a semicircle. The distinguishing feature of this
design is high isolation between MIMO antenna elements
while maintaining high gain and wideband characteristics.
The proposed single element antenna geometry has an over-
all compact size of 0.85λ0 × 0.85λ0 × 0.038λ0 . Simulated
FIGURE 17. Diversity gain of the proposed MIMO antenna. and measured results show that the proposed single ele-
ment antenna has a wide 10 dB impedance bandwidth of
For all the antenna elements, the diversity gain of the pro- 15.5% (3.27 – 3.82 GHz). The antenna also offers stable
posed MIMO antenna is more than 9.98 dB which is very and symmetrical radiation patterns with a high radiation effi-
close to the ideal value of 10 dB. ciency (>92%) and a peak gain of 8.1 dBi. The proposed

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4-port (2 × 2) MIMO antenna is designed using the pro- [14] I. Mohamed, M. Abdalla, and A. E.-A. Mitkees, ‘‘Perfect isolation per-
posed single element by placing each element orthogonally formance among two-element MIMO antennas,’’ AEU Int. J. Electron.
Commun., vol. 107, pp. 21–31, Jul. 2019.
to each other. A decoupling structure consisting of slots and [15] M. Naderi, F. B. Zarrabi, F. S. Jafari, and S. Ebrahimi, ‘‘Fractal EBG
metallic strip with shorting pins is implemented to improve structure for shielding and reducing the mutual coupling in microstrip
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M. A. Sufian et al.: Isolation Enhancement of MTS-Based MIMO Antenna Using Slots and Shorting Pins

NIAMAT HUSSAIN received the B.S. degree in KOOK SUN SHIN received the B.S. degree in
electronics engineering from the Dawood Uni- electronic and communication engineering from
versity of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, the Korea National University of Transportation,
Pakistan, in 2014, the M.S. degree in electrical South Korea, in 2001, and the M.S. degree in
and computer engineering from Ajou University, information and communication engineering from
Suwon, South Korea, and the Ph.D. degree in Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, South
information and communication engineering from Korea, in 2003, where he is currently pursuing the
Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, South Ph.D. degree with the Department of Information
Korea. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher and Communication Engineering. He is currently
with Chungbuk National University. His research working at FITI Testing & Research Institute,
interests include lens-coupled antennas, metasurface antennas, metamate- Cheongju. His research interests include antenna design, EMC measure-
rial antennas, UWB antennas, mmWave antennas, and terahertz antennas. ments, and EMF.
He was bestowed with the Best Paper Award, in 2017, for his presented paper
at Korea Winter Conference.

HUSSAIN ASKARI received the B.S. degree in

telecommunication engineering from The Islamia
University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan, in 2017. He is
currently pursuing the master’s degree in informa-
tion and communication engineering with Chung-
buk National University, Cheongju, South Korea.
His research interests include circularly polarized NAM KIM received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.
antennas, metamaterial antennas, UWB antennas, degrees in electronics engineering from Yonsei
mmWave antennas, BioEM effects of antennas, University, Seoul, South Korea, in 1981, 1983,
and terahertz antennas. and 1988, respectively. He has been a Professor
with the School of Information and Communica-
SEONG GYOON PARK is currently serving as tion Engineering, Chungbuk National University,
a Professor with the Department of Informa- Cheongju, South Korea, since 1989. His research
tion and Communication Engineering, Kongju interests include optical information processing,
National University. His research interests include the health effect of the EMF, wireless power
EMC, antenna design for WIFI, and mobile transfer, and antennas for mobile communications.
communications. He is a member of the International Advisory Committee for the World
Health Organization Project on EMF, the IEEE International Committee on
Electromagnetic Safety, and the International Electro Technical Commission
TC 106. He was the President of the Bioelectromagnetics Society.

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