Design of wideband and dual-polarized antenna array with 3D-printing method

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a wideband and dual-polarized antenna array. The cross dipole is used as the basic antenna element and the air-filled strip line is used as the transmission line of the feeding network. The total metal structure is adopted to achieve high efficiency of the antenna array. Because lots of air filled components and total metal structure are used in the antenna array, the metal supports for structures should be designed carefully. A $4\times4$ array is designed for verifying this method. The simulated show that the proposed wave antennas can cover the bandwidth of 10.5-14.5 GHz (32% relative bandwidth) with VSWR<2.2. The realized gain varies from 18.2 dB to 20.4 dB over the frequency band. The total height of the antenna array part is only 11.5mm. Due to the complicated structure, this antenna will be fabricated with metal 3D Printing techniques.