Design of series-feed printed dipole antenna

Abstract

Most antenna array designs use parallel feed method for element excitation. However, the efficiency of parallel feed network is relatively low in large scale array due to insertion lost on the long feed line. The length of feed line can be reduced by using series feed method and the overall performance can be improved by taking both advantages of series and parallel feed method. A combination of series and parallel feed printed dipole antenna array is designed and fabricated. The main focus of the project is to design an antenna array for C-band, ranging from 3.7 GHz to 4.2 GHz, receptions. A double-side printed dipole antenna with back-to-back structure is employed and fabricated on FR-4 substrate with metallic reflector for cost-effective consideration and gain improvement. Each part of the antenna array is investigated for maximizing the performance, such as phase difference and equality of power distribution on each element. Over 40% impedance bandwidth (return loss > 10dB) and relatively high gain measured results were shown on the 2X2 array prototype.