This paper presents a circularly polarized (CP) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna using a microstrip patch and parasitic elements. The proposed design exhibits wideband characteristics for both impedance and axial ratio bandwidths. Especially, the mutual coupling between the MIMO elements is significantly depressed without using any decoupling network. To achieve these features, parasitic elements are positioned nearby and in different layers to the radiating elements. The measured results demonstrate that the proposed MIMO CP antenna has a wideband operation of 11.3% (5.0-5.6 GHz), which is defined by an overlap between -10-dB impedance and 3-dB axial ratio bandwidths. Across this band, the realized gain is better than 6.0 dBi, and the isolation is greater than 32 dB with the highest value of 45 dB. The MIMO parameters such as the envelope correlation coefficient, diversity gain, and channel capacity loss are also investigated thoroughly, which are found to be good on the scale of diversity standards.
Keywords: MIMO antenna; circularly polarized; high isolation; parasitic element; patch; wideband.