Slot-Based Patch Antenna Design for Enhanced Bandwidth and Reduced Mutual Coupling in MIMO Systems

This paper explores the impact of mutual coupling on the performance of MIMO systems, particularly in 5G microstrip antennas. Through simulations, we investigate the coupling effect in a proposed Microstrip Patch Antenna (MPA) design. A single-element MPA and a 4-element antenna array are designed to analyze mutual coupling and improve isolation by introducing slots, thereby increasing the data rate. The slotted single microstrip antenna achieves a 175% bandwidth improvement, covering 27.6 GHz to 29.7 GHz at a center frequency of 28 GHz. The results show that the 4-element slotted microstrip MIMO antenna system reduces mutual coupling to -16.675 dB, outperforming the not slotted design (-14.4 dB). This work aims to design a single-band 4-element MIMO microstrip antenna for 5G systems, enhancing bandwidth, reducing mutual coupling, and achieving high data rates, polarization, bandwidth (>1 GHz), and realized gain at 28 GHz.