Multidirectional Pixelated Cubic Antenna with Enhanced Isolation for Vehicular Applications

This paper presents a pixelated cubic antenna design with enhanced isolation and diverse radiation pattern for vehicular applications. The design consists of four radiating patches to take advantage of a nearly omnidirectional radiation pattern with enhanced isolation and high gain. The antenna system with four patches has been pixelated and optimized simultaneously to achieve desired performance and high isolation at 5.4 GHz band. The antenna achieved measured isolation of more than -34 dB between antenna elements. The overall isolation improvement obtained by the antenna is about 18 dB compared to a configuration using standard patch antennas. Moreover, isolation improvement is achieved through patch pixelization without additional resonators or elements. The antenna achieved up to 6.9 dB realized gain in each direction. Additionally, the cubic antenna system is equipped with an E-shaped GPS antenna to facilitate connectivity with GPS satellite. Finally, the antenna performance has been investigated using a simulation model of the vehicle roof and roof rack. The reflection coefficient, isolation and radiation patterns of the antenna remains unaffected. The antenna prototype has been fabricated on Rogers substrate and measured to verify the simulation results. The measured results correlate well with the simulation results. The proposed antenna features low-profile, simple design for ease of manufacture, good radiation characteristics with multidirectional property and high isolation, which are well-suited to vehicular applications in different environments.