A wideband dual-polarized antenna using magneto-electric dipoles for base station applications

Abstract

Design and investigation of a new configuration of wideband dual-polarized magneto-electric dipole (MED) antenna for 2G/3G/4G base station applications operating from 1.7 to 2.7 GHz is presented. Two pairs of single-polarized MED antennas are arranged adjacent to each other to produce ±45° dual-polarization. Each pair of dipoles excited through a 3-dB power divider fed by a coaxial cable and a ground plane employed under the dipoles with the distance of λ/4 to produces a metallic reflector, which leads to unidirectional radiation patterns. Consequently, the proposed two-port base-station (BTS) antenna yields bandwidths of 1190 MHz (1.64 GHz–2.83 GHz) and 1060 MHz (1.67 GHz–2.73 GHz) for port-1 and −2 respectively with isolation better than −20 dB between the ports. Twelve metallic ground walls surround the radiators to achieve stable radiation properties across the operating frequency band. Subsequently, the dual-polarized antenna achieves half-power beamwidths (HPBWs) of about 61°, 65°, and 70° at frequencies of 1800 MHz, 2000 MHZ, and 2300 MHz respectively and realized peak gain of around 10.29 dBi for port-1 and 10.27 dBi for port-2 within the operating frequency band. A prototype of the proposed dual-polarized BTS antenna fabricated and tested with a good agreement between the measurements and simulations.