Base Station Antenna Mutual Coupling Reduction by Means of Element Orientation

Abstract

Typical base station antenna is actually an array arrangement of a number of basic antenna elements. The array nature of the base station antenna cannot avoid any consequence of the mutual coupling phenomenon, a phenomenon inherent in any type of array. A possible approach to counter the detrimental effects of mutual coupling is to align all elements in a manner that mutual coupling would cause the least of any possible detrimental effects. This approach is herein termed as element orientation. For obtaining the orientation of each element that leads to minimisation of mutual coupling effects GA optimization is employed. Simulation and simulator results show that mutual coupling is reducible by properly orientating the elements. This element orientation technique is thus a promising approach for mutual coupling reduction.