volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

This paper proposes a four-mode circularly polarized metasurface multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna based on characteristic mode analysis (CMA), which can be applied to Sub-6GHz communications, unmanned aerial vehicle communications, wireless local area network, and other scenarios. Its core geometric novelty is a gradient-scaled 4×4 metasurface radiating layer: central units with corner truncation and 45° rotated rectangular stubs, and four corner units scaled down to 0.75 times the central size. This structure generates the 90° phase difference for CP radiation, synchronously exciting two orthogonal characteristic mode pairs to realize broadband CP radiation, and endows the metasurface with inherent self-decoupling capability. In addition, a 2×2 MIMO array is constructed by combining four monopole antenna elements, and the mutual coupling is suppressed by the metasurface itself, achieving a port isolation greater than 25 dB. Simulation and measurement results show that the impedance bandwidth is 41.93% (5.07-7.76 GHz), the axial ratio (AR) bandwidth is 17.5% (5.37-6.40 GHz), the peak gain is 6.77 dBi, the array envelope correlation coefficient is as low as 0.0002, and the diversity gain reaches 9.999 dB. The antenna achieves an excellent balance among broadband performance, high isolation, and structural simplicity, outperforming existing similar designs.

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Dr. Yuhao Wei

Professor Zhonggen Wang

Professor Wenyan Nie

Professor Han Lin