High-Performance MIMO Antenna with Defected Ground Structure for WLAN Applications

In this paper, a two-element MIMO antenna with and without Defected Ground (DG) is presented. The proposed designs are created on an FR-4 substrate with a dielectric constant of 4.4 and a thickness 1.6 mm. The resonance, radiation and diversity characteristics of the proposed antennas are plotted to find the suitability for deploying in Wireless LAN (WLAN) applications operating at 2.4 GHz. In this research, we considered Envelope Correlation Coefficient (ECC), Channel Capacity Loss (CCL), Diversity Gain (DG) and Total Active Reflection Coefficient (TARC) as major diversity characteristics. Proposed designs are fabricated and tested using Nano VNA SAA 2. The simulation results and measured results are compared to and found that the MIMO with defected ground resulted in improved gain and isolation by maintaining all other parameters in the acceptable range.