Mutual Coupling Reduction by Novel Fractal Defected Ground Structure Bandgap Filter

This paper presents a novel fractal defected ground structure (FDGS) to reduce mutual coupling between coplanar spaced microstrip antenna elements. The structure of the proposed FDGS is studied. Bandgap characteristic of second and third iterative FDGS is achieved. The second and third iterative FDGSs are used to reduce mutual coupling between microstrip antenna elements. Mutual coupling reduction performance of third iterative FDGS is better than that of second iterative FDGS. And dimension of FDGS can be decreased by using higher level iterative FDGS. The third iterative FDGS is fabricated and measured. Simulated and measured results both show that more than 35-dB mutual coupling reduction is obtained by using the third iterative FDGS. Moreover, the envelope correlation of antenna elements with FDGS is quite smaller than that of antenna elements without FDGS.