Design of wideband base station antennas

Abstract

Microstrip patch antennas are attractive due to their low profile, low cost and ease of manufacture. A meandering probe fed patch antenna is a kind of patch antennas which has a wide bandwidth, a low cross-polarization level and a high gain. Recently, a dual polarized patch antenna fed by meandering probes was proposed for increasing the capacity of wireless communication links and reducing the installation costs. However, the radiation patterns of the proposed antenna are not symmetric. Besides, its impedance bandwidth is not wide enough for operating 1.71-2.17 GHz. In this project, a wideband dual polarized patch antenna with symmetrical co-polar radiation patterns was designed. The designed antenna not only exhibits broadband and symmetric radiation pattern characteristics but also exhibits low cross polarization, high input port isolation and high gain characteristics.