Open Access
New approach to suppress mutual coupling between longitudinal-slotted arrays based on SIW antenna loaded with metal-fences working on VHF/UHF frequency-bands: study, investigation, and principle
(IEEE, 2019) Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad; Virdee, Bal S.; Khalily, Mohsen; See, Chan H.; Abd-Alhameed, Raed; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Limiti, Ernesto; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren
In this work it is demonstrated that substrate integrated waveguide longitudinal slotted array antenna (SIWLSAA) which is loaded with metal fences exhibits high-isolation across VHF/UHF bands. A reference SIWLSAA used for comparison purpose comprises of 3×6 slotted arrays constructed on the top and bottom sides of the FR-4 lossy substrate has maximum isolation of -63 dB between its radiation slots. Improvement in isolation is demonstrated using a simple new technique based on inserting a metal fence between each row of slot arrays. The resulting isolation is shown to be is better than -83 dB across 200 MHz to 1.0 GHz with gain greater than 1.5 dBi, and side-lobe level less than - 40 dB. The proposed SIWLSAA is compact and has dimensions of 40×10×5 mm 3 (0.026?×0.006?×0.0020) where ? is 200 MHz. The proposed structure should find application in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and radar systems.
Open Access
Antenna mutual coupling suppression over wideband using embedded periphery slot for antenna arrays
(MDPI, 2018) Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad; Virdee, Bal S.; Shukla, Panchamkumar; See, Chan H.; Abd-Alhameed, Raed; Khalily, Mohsen; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Limiti, Ernesto; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren
This paper presents a new approach to suppress interference between neighbouring radiating elements resulting from surface wave currents. The proposed technique will enable the realization of low-profile implementation of highly dense antenna configuration necessary in SAR and MIMO communication systems. Unlike other conventional techniques of mutual coupling suppression where a decoupling slab is located between the radiating antennas the proposed technique is simpler and only requires embedding linear slots near the periphery of the patch. Attributes of this technique are (i) significant improvement in the maximum isolation between the adjacent antennas by 26.7 dB in X-band and >15 dB in Ku and K-bands; (ii) reduction in edge-to-edge gap between antennas to 10 mm (0.37 ); and (iii) improvement in gain by >40% over certain angular directions, which varies between 4.5 dBi and 8.2 dBi. The proposed technique is simple to implement at low cost.
Open Access
High-gain on-chip antenna design on silicon layer with aperture excitation for terahertz applications
(IEEE, 2020) Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad; Virdee, Bal S.; Khalily, Mohsen; See, Chan H.; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren
This letter investigates the feasibility of designing a high gain on-chip antenna on silicon technology for subterahertz applications over a wide-frequency range. High gain is achieved by exciting the antenna using an aperture fed mechanism to couple electromagnetics energy from a metal slot line, which is sandwiched between the silicon and polycarbonate substrates, to a 15-element array comprising circular and rectangular radiation patches fabricated on the top surface of the polycarbonate layer. An open ended microstrip line, which is orthogonal to the metal slot-line, is implemented on the underside of the silicon substrate. When the open ended microstrip line is excited it couples the signal to the metal slot-line which is subsequently coupled and radiated by the patch array. Measured results show the proposed on-chip antenna exhibits a reflection coefficient of less than-10 dB across 0.290-0.316 THz with a highest gain and radiation efficiency of 11.71 dBi and 70.8%, respectively, occurred at 0.3 THz. The antenna has a narrow stopband between 0.292 and 0.294 THz. The physical size of the presented subterahertz on-chip antenna is 20 × 3.5 × 0.126 mm3.
Open Access
Double-port slotted-antenna with multiple miniaturized radiators for wideband wireless communication systems and portable devices
(Electromagnetics Academy, 2019) Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad; Khalily, Mohsen; Virdee, Bal S.; Ali, Abdul; Shukla, Panchamkumar; See, Chan H.; Abd-Alhameed, Raed; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Limiti, Ernesto; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa
Proof-of-concept is presented of a novel slot antenna structure with two excitation ports. Although this antenna provides a wide impedance bandwidth, its peak gain and optimum radiation efficiency are observed at its mid-band operational frequency. The antenna structure is etched on the top side of a dielectric substrate with a ground plane. The antenna essentially consists of a rectangular patch with two dielectric slots in which multiple coupled patch arms embedded with H-shaped slits are loaded. The two dielectric slots are isolated from each other with a large H-shaped slit. The radiation characteristics of the proposed antenna in terms of impedance bandwidth, gain and efficiency can be significantly improved by simply increasing the number of radiation arms and modifying their dimensions. The antenna’s performance was verified by building and testing three prototype antennas. The final optimized antenna exhibits a fractional bandwidth of 171% (0.5–6.4 GHz) with a peak gain and maximum radiation efficiency of 5.3 dBi and 75% at 4.4 GHz, respectively. The antenna has physical dimensions of 27×37×1.6 mm3 corresponding to electrical size of 0.0452λ0 ×0.0627λ0 ×0.0026λ0,where λ0 is freespace wavelength at 0.5 GHz. The antenna is compatible for integration in handsets and other broadband wireless systems that operate over L-, S-, and C-bands.
Open Access
Interaction between closely packed array antenna elements using meta-surface for applications such as MIMO systems and synthetic aperture radars
(Wiley, 2018) Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad; Virdee, Bal S.; Shukla, Panchamkumar; See, Chan H.; Abd-Alhameed, Raed; Khalily, Mohsen; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Limiti, Ernesto; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren
The paper presents a technique to enhance the isolation between adjacent radiating elements that is common in densely packed antenna arrays. Such antennas provide frequency beam-scanning capability needed in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems and synthetic aperture radars. The method proposed here uses a metamaterial decoupling slab (MTM-DS), which is located between radiating elements, to suppress mutual coupling between the elements that would otherwise degrade the antenna efficiency and performance in both the transmit and receive mode. The proposed MTM-DS consists of mirror imaged E-shaped slits engraved on a microstrip patch with inductive stub. Measured results confirm over 9–11 GHz with no MTM-DS the average isolation (S12) is −27 dB; however, with MTM-DS the average isolation improves to −38 dB. With this technique the separation between the radiating element can be reduced to 0.66λ0, where λ0 is free space wavelength at 10 GHz. In addition, with this technique there is 15% improvement in operating bandwidth. At frequencies of high impedance match of 9.95 and 10.63 GHz the gain is 4.52 and 5.40 dBi, respectively. Furthermore, the technique eliminates poor front-to-back ratio encountered in other decoupling methods. MTM-DS is also relatively simple to implement. Assuming adequate space is available between adjacent radiators the MTM-DS can be fixed retrospectively on existing antenna arrays, which makes the proposed method versatile. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
Open Access
A new study to suppress mutual-coupling between waveguide slot array antennas based on metasurface bulkhead for MIMO systems
(IEEE, 2018) Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad; Virdee, Bal S.; Khalily, Mohsen; See, Chan H.; Abd-Alhameed, Raed; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Limiti, Ernesto; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren
In this paper, a new method is proposed to reduce mutual coupling between waveguide slot array (WSA) antennas based on metasurface technology. This is achieved by placing a metasurface bulkhead between the two WSA antennas. Performance of the dual-waveguide antenna structure is shown to substantially enhance when compared against an identical reference WSA antenna with no metasurface. WSA antennas used in the study has dimensions 40×20×5mm 3 and operates over 1.7-3.66 GHz, which corresponds to a fractional bandwidth of 73.13%. The average isolation of the reference WSA antennas is -20 dB; however, with a metasurface bulkhead the isolation is shown to increase to -36.5 dB. In addition, the bandwidth extends by ~10%, and the gain improves by 14.66%. The proposed method is should find application in MIMO systems where high isolation between neighbouring radiation elements is required to improve the antenna characteristics, and mimimise array phase errors, which is necessary to enhance the system performance.