Investigation of mutual coupling effects on the radiation pattern of rectangular patch antennas

Different scenarios of including mutual coupling effects in the analysis of rectangular patch antenna arrays are investigated. A standard method of moments technique is utilized to present three different models of mutual coupling interactions. The corresponding radiation patterns of a 3*3 array are compared with those of neglected mutual coupling. The results illustrate the movement in the radiation patterns as the modeling of the contribution of coupling effects increases from one level to another. It is found that considering only the adjacent patches of the individual elements results in inaccurate radiation pattern predictions.<>