Reduction of Mutual Coupling Between Patch Antennas Using a Polarization-Conversion Isolator

A novel approach to suppress mutual coupling (MC) between two patch antennas is presented in this letter. A parasitic isolator, which is printed between the two patches, controls the polarization of the coupling field to reduce the antenna coupling. Furthermore, a defected ground structure is employed to suppress the cross-polarization (XP) level. There exists a tradeoff between the MC reduction and XP improvement in this approach. As an example, a two-element patch array with an optimized isolator is fabricated and measured. The measured results show that, at the resonant frequency, the achieved isolation enhancement and XP level are 19.6 dB and -13.2 dB, respectively.