Effect of Substrate parameters on Mutual Coupling between Microstrip Antennas

Abstract: For any wireless application, microstrip patch antenna has to meet the contrasting requirement of high gain and low return loss. The gain of microstrip patch antenna can be improved by increasing the number of antenna elements forming a linear or planar array. Mutual coupling between microstrip antennas becomes an important factor to consider when designing an antenna array. A mutual coupling reduction method is introduced here for closely placed two element microstrip antennas positioned in E-plane, H-plane and for diagonal orientations. The microstrip patch array antennas are designed, simulated and optimized using HFSS software. To achieve the compactness of an antenna array, antennas are placed at distance of less than half wavelength. To reduce the coupling effect, rectangular slots are introduced between the patch antenna elements.

Keywords: Mutual coupling, Microstrip Array Antenna, HFSS, Simulation, RT Duroid.