A triple‐band composite base station and satellite antenna array for maritime application

Abstract

This paper presents a triple-band composite antenna array for maritime application. It consists of a three-element base station antenna array and a waveguide based satellite antenna, which are applied for near-shore and long distance off-shore communications, respectively. For the former, it is a ±45° dual polarized array with dipole radiators and covers 2G/3G/4G bands. The three elements are arranged in a form of half hexagon and attain 180° coverage of half power beamwidth (HPBW) in azimuth plane by switching the feeding ports. For the latter, it is a sequentially fed circularly polarized antenna operating in Ku-band and has a wide HPBW through loading a dielectric structure. To validate the design idea, a prototype is fabricated and measured. Experimental results show that the base station antenna array achieves wide bandwidth of 49.14% from 0.66 to 1.09 GHz and 46.58% from 1.68 to 2.7 GHz with VSWR < 1.5. Meanwhile, the satellite antenna has a wide 3-dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth of 20.1% from 12.1 to 14.8 GHz with reflection coefficients lower than −15 dB. Within the band, the HPBW is larger than 90° and the 3-dB AR beamwidth covers the HPBW.