Design of Dual-Port Pattern-Reconfigurable MIMO Antenna With Four Operating States Using the TCM

Based on the theory of characteristic modes (TCM), this letter presents a novel pattern-reconfigurable dual-port multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with four operating states at the 2.4 GHz ISM band. The proposed antenna consists of the rectangular platform (RP), excitation units, and reconfigurable feeding network. Four elaborated characteristic modes (CMs) of the RP can be stimulated effectively by six groups of balanced inductive exciters. By using a reconfigurable feeding network controlled by four switches, two orthogonal CMs associated with the two ports are switched, and four possible operating states for the reconfigurable MIMO antenna are generated. In order to demonstrate the proposed TCM-based conceptual design, a prototype is fabricated and the measured results agree well with the simulated ones. Furthermore, the port isolations of the proposed MIMO antenna are higher than 36 dB.

Automated summary

Based on the theory of characteristic modes (TCM), a novel pattern-reconfigurable dual-port multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with four operating states at the 2.4 GHz ISM band is proposed. The antenna consists of a rectangular platform (RP), excitation units, and a reconfigurable feeding network. By controlling the reconfigurable feeding network using four switches, the two orthogonal characteristic modes associated with the two ports are switched, generating four possible operating states for the reconfigurable MIMO antenna. A prototype is fabricated to demonstrate the proposed TCM-based conceptual design, and the measured results agree well with the simulated ones. Furthermore, the port isolations of the proposed MIMO antenna are higher than 36 dB.