A Broadband Dual-Polarized Omnidirectional Antenna for Base Stations

Abstract

A broadband vertically/horizontally dual-polarized omnidirectional antenna is proposed for mobile communications. The dual-polarized antenna is a combination of a modified low-profile monopole for vertical polarization (VP) and a circular planar loop for horizontal polarization (HP). The modified low-profile monopole is a circular folded patch shorted by four tubes while the circular loop consists of four half-wavelength arc dipoles. The dual-polarized omnidirectional antenna achieves a bandwidth of ~ 25% (1.7-2.2 GHz) with an isolation of around 40 dB. The gain variations in the horizontal plane are less than 2.5 dB for VP and 1.5 dB for HP. An eight-element dual-polarized antenna array is developed for base station applications. The antenna gains of the array for both VP and HP are ~ 8 dBi with a difference of less than 1 dB. The beamwidths in the vertical plane are 9±1 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> for VP and 9±1.5 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> for HP. The cross-polarization levels in the horizontal plane for both VP and HP are lower than -20 dB.