Radiation Energy and Mutual Coupling Evaluation for Multimode MIMO Antenna Based on the Theory of Characteristic Mode

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method to evaluate radiation energy and mutual coupling in multimode antennas. Based on the theory of characteristics mode, how much each mode occupies the radiation and the mutual coupling from each feeding port is calculated with the modal energy occupied coefficients. Furthermore, the linear transformation of feeding network in multimode antenna system has been adopted to complete the modal-based method. Then, this method is utilized to analyze and decrease the mutual coupling between feeding ports. Hence, a hexagonal wideband antenna is proposed with its evolution process and measured to validate the proposed method. The presented hexagonal antenna is a four-port multimode antenna consisting a planar hexagonal plate, vertical tapered baluns, and feeding network at the ground plane. The whole antenna works in 3–6 GHz and all its four ports are well matched with high port-to-port isolation.