Investigation of a Miniaturized Four-Element Antenna Integrated with Dipole Elements and Meta-Couplers for 5G Applications

A miniaturized four-element antenna of 20 mm × 20 mm with edge-to-edge distance of 4.9 mm between the array antennas operating from 4.6–8.6 GHz is investigated in this article. The antenna consists of 4 × integrated dipole driven elements, and complementary split ring resonator (CSRR) metacells are loaded on the both sides of each dipole arms. The loaded meta-couplers magnetically couple to dipole drivers, and the induced resonance effect improves the 10-dB impedance bandwidth (IBW) to 60.6%. To improvise the isolation between antenna elements, metallic vias are implemented that trap electromagnetic (EM)-surface waves to condense into the ground. So, the meta-couplers induce electromagnetic (EM)-propagation as surface wave trapments for radiation and decouple near-field condensed currents, acting as couplers/decouplers. The maximum isolation achieved is >−22.5 dB without any external decoupling network. The diversity parameters indicate good attributes in isotropic, indoor, and outdoor channel environments with an envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) < 0.165 and realized gain of 5.5 dBi with average radiation efficiency of 80–90% in the desired operating bands. An equivalent circuit model using lumped components is designed for the proposed four-element antenna. For validation, a prototype antenna is fabricated and measured to be implemented in 5G applications, which shows good correlation with the full-wave simulated results.