A Dual Slant-Polarized Cylindrical Array of Tightly Coupled Dipole Antennas

Abstract

This study proposes a design of a low-profile ultra wide-band cylindrical antenna array with plus/minus 45-degree dual polarization. The proposed compact cylindrical antenna array produces an omnidirectional radiation pattern in the azimuth plane to cover all directions. It consists of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$20\times 4$ </tex-math></inline-formula> dual-polarized elements within a diameter of 131 mm and a height of 116 mm. The array elements are tightly coupled slant-polarized wideband dipole antennas, and hence, rotational symmetry of radiation patterns in the horizontal plane is achieved for the two orthogonal polarizations. Furthermore, a metasurface structure has been designed and placed over the interconnected array elements to achieve ultrawideband capabilities. The proposed array provides less than &#x2212;10 dB reflection coefficient over a frequency band between 1.7 GHz and 5.9 GHz. The cross-polarization discrimination (XPD) is 15 dB at boresight in the azimuth plane. The electromagnetic characteristics of the cylindrical array and its corresponding planar array before bending have been evaluated and compared via simulations, and verified by measurements. The compact size, lightweight, and printable design of the proposed antenna array enable low-cost manufacturing and ease of installation. The proposed array design overcomes many challenges encountered in wide-band MIMO systems by covering the entire sub-6 GHz band while providing wide 360-degree coverage in the azimuth plane, hence, supporting multibeam applications.