Electromagnetic coupling reduction in dual-band microstrip antenna array using ultra-compact single-negative electric metamaterials for MIMO application

In this paper, an ultra-compact single negative（SNG） electric waveguided metamaterial（WG-MTM） is first investigated and used to reduce the mutual coupling in E ＆ H planes of a dual-band microstrip antenna array. The proposed SNG electric WG-MTM unit cell is designed by etching two different symmetrical spiral lines on the ground, and has two stopbands operating at 1.86 GHz and 2.40 GHz. The circuit size is very compact, which is only λ_0/33.6 ×λ_0/15.1（where λ_0 is the wavelength at 1.86 GHz in free space）. Taking advantage of the dual-stopband property of the proposed SNG electric WG-MTM, a dual-band microstrip antenna array operating at 1.86 GHz and 2.40 GHz with very low mutual coupling is designed by embedding a cross shaped array of the proposed SNG electric WG-MTM. The measured and simulated results of the designed dual-band antenna array are in good agreement with each other, indicating that the mutual coupling of the fabricated dual-band antenna array realizes 9.8/11.1 d B reductions in the H plane, 8.5/7.9 d B reductions in the E plane at1.86 GHz and 2.40 GHz, respectively. Besides, the distance of the antenna elements in the array is only 0.35 λ_0（where λ_0 is the wavelength at 1.86 GHz in free space）. The proposed strategy is used for the first time to reduce the mutual coupling in E ＆ H planes of the dual-band microstrip antenna array by using ultra-compact SNG electric WG-MTM.

Recent ICRF coupling experiments on EAST

Recent ion cyclotron resonance frequency（ICRF） coupling experiments for optimizing ICRF heating in high power discharge were performed on EAST. The coupling experiments were focus on antenna phasing and gas puffing, which were performed separately on two ports of the ion cyclotron resonance heating（ICRH） system of EAST. The antenna phasing was performed on the I-port antenna, which consists of four toroidally spaced radiating straps operating in multiple phasing cases; the coupling performance was better under low wave number ∣k;∣（ranging from 4.5 to 6.5）. By fuelling the plasma from gas injectors, placed as uniformly spaced array from top to bottom at each side limiter of the B-port antenna, which works in dipole phasing, the coupling resistance of the B-port antenna increased obviously.Furthermore, the coupling resistance of the I-port antenna was insensitive to a smaller rate of gas puffing but when the gas injection rate was more than a certain value(>1021 s;), a sharp increase in the coupling resistance of the I-port antenna occurred, which was mainly caused by the toroidal asymmetric boundary density arising from gas puffing. A more specific analysis is given in the paper.

Shannon information capacity of time reversal wideband multiple-input multiple-output system based on correlated statistical channels

Utilizing channel reciprocity, time reversal（TR） technique increases the signal-to-noise ratio（SNR） at the receiver with very low transmitter complexity in complex multipath environment. Present research works about TR multiple-input multiple-output（MIMO） communication all focus on the system implementation and network building. The aim of this work is to analyze the influence of antenna coupling on the capacity of wideband TR MIMO system, which is a realistic question in designing a practical communication system. It turns out that antenna coupling stabilizes the capacity in a small variation range with statistical wideband channel response. Meanwhile, antenna coupling only causes a slight detriment to the channel capacity in a wideband TR MIMO system. Comparatively, uncorrelated stochastic channels without coupling exhibit a wider range of random capacity distribution which greatly depends on the statistical channel. The conclusions drawn from information difference entropy theory provide a guideline for designing better high-performance wideband TR MIMO communication systems.