Abstract
Vehicular Internet of Things (IoT) is facilitated by efficient RF front ends with suppressed mutual coupling for enhanced spatial diversity and increased channel capacity. This paper presents a mutual coupling suppressed MIMO antenna with a hybrid decoupling technique for Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications, enabling IoT in automotive systems. The single elements consist of a radiating patch with a cleaving circular slot to introduce a capacitive effect on the radiating structure. Afterwards, the single-unit design is further extrapolated to a 2 × 2 MIMO antenna. The mutual coupling is suppressed between antenna elements by introducing a quasi-fractal parasitic element and a defected ground structure (DGS). The MIMO antenna is designed to conform to the requirements posed by V2X systems in Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and Intelligent transportation system (ITS) scenarios. The proposed MIMO antenna offers measured |S(11)| < -10 dB of 200 MHz, ranging from 5.77 GHz to 5.97 GHz, fully covering the spectrum guided by the IEEE 802.11p standard. A physical prototype is fabricated and placed on a car roof to assess the congruency between measured and simulated results. The MIMO antenna exhibits exceptional diversity properties, such as enhanced isolation (>28 dB) between its individual elements, a diversity gain (DG) close to the ideal value of 10 dB (9.99 dB), peak realized gain of 6.5 dBi, an ECC below 0.001, and a beam coverage area of 180° in azimuthal and elevation plane by dynamic port switching. Thus, the proposed MIMO antenna module is a considerable candidate for future V2X communication paradigms.