A Dual-Polarized Compact Patch Antenna for Sub-6 GHz 5G Base Stations

Abstract

In this paper, a novel dual-polarized patch antenna with extremely low-profile and compact structure is proposed for Sub-6 GHz 5G base station applications. The proposed antenna avoids using the conventional high-cost multilayer PCB technology, which makes it a low-cost design with a simple configuration. It consists of a radiation patch, a coupled feeding structure and a reflector. The compact size of the antenna can be achieved by etching T shape slots on the radiating patch. A square-ring shape feeding structure is introduced to couple the energy to the patch, achieving polarization of ± 45° and broadening bandwidth. As a result, the dual-polarized antenna could operate from 3.3 to 3.7 GHz with stable radiation patterns. Moreover, a 1 × 3 antenna array is designed and simulation results show that the antenna array could operate from 3.3-3.8 GHz with S 11 , S 22 less than -15 dB, high port isolation and stable radiation patterns. The proposed antenna has high potential in the 5G massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) applications.