16-Port Non-planar MIMO Antenna System with Near-Zero-Index (NZI) Metamaterial Decoupling Structure for 5G Applications

In this article, a low-cost 16-port non-planar Multiple-Input-Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna system is proposed for future 5G applications. The non-planar MIMO antenna system is established around a 3D-octagonal-shape polystyrene block. The MIMO elements are arranged on the eight-sides of octagonal-shape block, whereas bottom and top faces of polystyrene block are left void. The single antenna element comprises of slotted microstrip patch with a stepped chamfered feed line and defected ground plane. Each MIMO element is designed on FR-4 substrate with a size of 22 mm × 20 mm, to cover the frequency band of 3.35 GHz to 3.65 GHz for the fifth-generation (5G) applications. The isolation between array elements is improved by using a meander-lines based near-zero-index epsilon-negative (NZI-ENG) metamaterial decoupling structure. The array elements are placed on the top-layer, whereas common connected ground plane and decoupling structure is placed on the bottom-layer. The metamaterial-based decoupling structure offers an isolation of more than 28 dB for antenna elements arranged in across and side-by-side configuration. Moreover, simulated and measured MIMO performance parameters i.e. Total Active Reflection Coefficient (TARC) < -18 dB, Envelop correlation coefficient (ECC) < 0.1 and Channel capacity loss (CCL) < 0.3 are in acceptable limits. The proposed non-planar 3D-MIMO antenna system can be employed for indoor localization systems and wireless personal area network applications, where different 5G devices are wirelessly linked to a centralized server. Moreover, a good agreement between simulated and measured results is achieved for the non-planar MIMO antenna system.