Mutual coupling effects on the performance of MIMO wireless channels

Abstract

Analytical expressions for both the mean received power of each antenna and the spatial correlation (SC) between antennas, in the presence of antenna mutual coupling (MC), are provided. The effect of MC on the mean power imbalance and SC between a pair of mutually coupled antennas is explicitly derived, and the conditions under which MC has no effect on the SC an also identified. The effect of MC on the capacity of multiple-input-multiple-output wireless channels is investigated numerically, which shows the decorrelation resulting from MC is a tradeoff between the mean direction of arrival and the pattern diversity due to MC.