Estimation of Mutual Coupling Coefficient of the Array by Simulated Annealing Algorithm

We propose a method for estimating the mutual coupling coefficient among antennas in this paper which is based on the principle of signal subspace and the simulated annealing （SA） algorithm. The computer simulation has been conducted to illustrate the＇ excellent performance of this method and to demonstrate that it is statistically efficient. The benefit of this new method is that calibration signals and unknown signals can be received simultaneously, during the course of calibration.

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.

Composite metamaterial enabled excellent performance of microstrip antenna array

This paper reports that the split ring resonators and complementary split ring resonators are compounded to construct a novel compact composite metamaterial. The composite metamaterial exhibits a unique property of blocking electromagnetic wave propagating in two directions near the resonant frequency. An example of two-element microstrip antenna array demonstrates that the developed metamaterial enables array performance that is an improvement in comparison with the traditional one, including mutual coupling suppression of 9.07 dB, remarkable side lobe suppression and gain improvement of 2.14 dB. The mechanism of performance enhancement is analysed based on the electric field and Poynting vector distributions in array. The present work not only is a meaningful exploration of new type composite metamaterial design, but also opens up possibilities for extensive metamaterial applications to antenna engineer.

DOA estimation and mutual coupling calibration with the SAGE algorithm

In this paper, a novel algorithm is presented for direction of arrival（DOA） estimation and array self-calibration in the presence of unknown mutual coupling. In order to highlight the relationship between the array output and mutual coupling coefficients, we present a novel model of the array output with the unknown mutual coupling coefficients. Based on this model, we use the space alternating generalized expectation-maximization（SAGE） algorithm to jointly estimate the DOA parameters and the mutual coupling coefficients. Unlike many existing counterparts, our method requires neither calibration sources nor initial calibration information. At the same time,our proposed method inherits the characteristics of good convergence and high estimation precision of the SAGE algorithm. By numerical experiments we demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms the existing method for DOA estimation and mutual coupling calibration.