60 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

8, 2009

A Broadband Dual-Polarized Magneto-Electric

Dipole Antenna With Simple Feeds
Bi Qun Wu, Graduate Student Member, IEEE, and Kwai-Man Luk, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—A novel dual-polarized magneto-electric dipole an-

tenna excited by two 0-shaped strips is presented. The antenna
achieves a common impedance bandwidth of 65.9% (SWR 2)
at both input ports. The antenna has excellent performance in
isolation, which is more than 36 dB between the two input ports,
and the gain of the antenna is about 9.5 dBi. The radiation pattern
and bandwidth over the operating frequency band are very stable.
Index Terms—Cross-polarization, dual-polarized magneto-elec-
tric dipole antenna, 0-shaped strip feed, high isolation and dual-
polarization.

I. INTRODUCTION
N THE DEVELOPMENT of recent wireless communica-
I tions, the capacity issue is becoming critical due to the ex-
pansion of wireless services and the number of mobile sub-
scribers. Research work has been focused on frequency reuse Fig. 1. Photograph of a dual-polarized magneto-electric dipole antenna with
and polarization diversity by using two orthogonal polarizations ground plane.
[1]. For the past few years, dual-polarized antennas have
been used widely in mobile communications to increase ca-
pacity and reduce the installation costs [2]. Significant advance-
ment in the design of dual-polarized antennas is observed.
However, it is difficult to achieve wide bandwidth, high isola-
tion, and low cross-polarization simultaneously [1]. The patch
antenna is a good choice over other kinds of antennas due to
its low profile, light weight, low costs, and easy fabrication for
dual-polarization implementation [3]. By employing aperture-
coupled feeds, a high-isolation antenna with wide impedance
bandwidth of more than 14% can be obtained [4]. With the use
of L-probe feeds, a patch antenna with impedance bandwidth of
about 24% and isolation over 30 dB can be obtained [1]. How-
ever, it requires two pairs of L-shaped probes to suppress the
coupling for achieving high isolation between two ports, which
increases the complexity of the antenna and costs of fabrication
[3].
A concept of exciting electric dipole and magnetic dipole si-
multaneously to produce equal E- and H-planes radiation pat- Fig. 2. Perspective view of a dual-polarized magneto-electric dipole antenna.
terns was first revealed by Clavin [5]. Since then, several inves-
tigations [6], [7] have been conducted to demonstrate the same
concept of complementary antenna. In 1974, Clavin presented
two parasitic inverted-L wires act like an electric dipole, and the
a simple structure of complementary antenna [8] in which two
rectangular slot acts like a magnetic dipole.
parasitic inverted-L wires are placed beside a slot antenna. The
Recently, a wideband complementary antenna designated as
the magneto-electric dipole was proposed by Luk et al. [9],
Manuscript received October 02, 2008; revised December 11, 2008. First pub- [10]. The antenna comprises a vertically oriented quarter-wave
lished December 31, 2008; current version published April 17, 2009. This work shorted patch and a planar dipole, which are equivalent to a com-
was supported in part by a grant from the Research Grant Commerce of the
Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China [Project No. CityU 119008]. bination of a magnetic dipole and electric dipole. Good elec-
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Depart- trical characteristics, such as low back radiation, stable antenna
ment of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, across the operating band, and symmetric E- and H-plane radia-
Hong Kong (e-mail: 50538940@student.cityu.edu.hk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online tion patterns, were demonstrated. In this letter, a dual-polarized
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. magneto-electric dipole antenna excited by two -shaped strips
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2008.2011656 is presented.
1536-1225/$25.00 © 2009 IEEE
WU AND LUK: BROADBAND DUAL-POLARIZED MAGNETO-ELECTRIC DIPOLE ANTENNA
Fig. 3. Top view of two orthogonal 0-shaped strips.
Fig. 4. Perspective view of two orthogonal 0-shaped strips.
TABLE I
DIMENSIONS OF PROPOSED ANTENNA
II. ANTENNA DESCRIPTION AND DESIGN GEOMETRY
The geometry of the dual-polarized magneto-electric dipole
antenna is shown in Figs. 1–4, with detailed dimensions for
operation at around 2.45 GHz. The dimensions were selected
after a detailed parametric study for good performance. The
61
Fig. 5. SWR and antenna gain versus frequency.
Fig. 6. Isolation versus frequency.
TABLE II
SUMMARY OF THE MEASURED IMPEDANCE BANDWIDTH OF DUAL-POLARIZED
MAGNETO-ELECTRIC ANTENNA
configuration of the proposed magneto-electric dipole element
is a combination of an electric dipole and a vertically oriented
shorted patch antenna. The upper part of the antenna, which is
the electric dipole element, has a square shape of dimensions
mm . The electric dipole is connected with
the lower part of antenna, which is a vertically oriented shorted
patch antenna with height of 28 mm ( refers to the
center frequency of operation). The separation between two ver-
tical walls is mm. Each -shaped strip feed consists
of two portions, a transmission line, and a coupled strip. The
transmission line, which is a linear tapered microstrip line, is lo-
cated close to the corner of a bent vertical wall. The remaining
coupling strip, which is an L-shaped strip, can be adjusted for
impedance matching [10]. The feeding strip is not electrically
connected to the second dipole arm. It enters into the triangular
hole of second dipole arm without touching the metal. Similar
to a conventional microstrip line, the characteristic impedance
of the microstrip line with a folded ground plane can be adjusted
by tuning the width of the line and the distance from the corner
of the folded vertical wall. The SMA connector located under
62
Fig. 7. Simulated and measured radiation patterns at port 1.
the ground plane is connected to the end of the linear tapered
line. To enhance the isolation between the two ports, the two or-
thogonal -shaped strip feeds are designated to have different
heights to reduce the coupling effect.
III. SWR AND ISOLATION
A prototype with dimensions shown in Table I was fabri-
cated and tested. Simulation results of standing-wave ratio
(SWR), isolation, radiation pattern, and gain were obtained by
the commercial EM software IE3D ver. 12.30. Experimental
results were measured by an HP8753ES network analyzer and
a compact range with an HP85103C antenna measurement
system. Figs. 5 and 6 depict the SWR and performance
versus frequency. Table II shows simulated and measured
impedance bandwidths of the antenna. It is observed that the
measured impedance bandwidth is 69.7% SWR and
74.6% SWR at port 1 and port 2, respectively, which is
slightly better than the original complementary wideband an-
tenna design [9]. The operating frequency ranges for port 1 and
port 2 are slightly different. This is probably due to the small
difference in dimensions and locations of the two strip lines.
The common bandwidth of the two ports is 65.9% SWR , design. Good agreement is observed between simulation and
ranging from 1.7185 to 3.409 GHz. Over the whole operating
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 8, 2009
frequency band, the isolation between two input ports is more
than 36 dB, which satisfies the design requirement for a com-
mercial base station antenna. When the size of ground plane is
reduced, the impedance and broadside radiation pattern do not
change significantly.
IV. GAIN AND RADIATION PATTERN
Fig. 5 also illustrates the antenna gain over the operating
frequencies. The maximum gain of the antenna is around
9.5 dBi, and the 3-dB gain bandwidth covers the range from 1.6
to 3.55 GHz. The simulated and measured radiation patterns
of the antenna at frequencies of 2.109, 2.707, and 3.306 GHz
are plotted in Figs. 7 and 8. The antenna has stable radiation
patterns and low back lobes across the entire bandwidth. The
3-dB beamwidth of the proposed dual-polarized magneto-elec-
tric dipole antenna is tabulated in Table III. The variation of
beamwitdh over the operating band is over a few degrees. When
the size of ground plane is reduced, the broadside radiation
pattern does not change significantly, whereas the back-lobe
level and gain deteriorate. Finally, we would like to mention
that the performance of the antenna is insensitive to the dimen-
sions of gap and height, which confirms that this is a robust
measurement results.
WU AND LUK: BROADBAND DUAL-POLARIZED MAGNETO-ELECTRIC DIPOLE ANTENNA
Fig. 8. Simulated and measured radiation patterns at port 2.
TABLE III
THE 3-dB BEAMWIDTH OF DUAL-POLARIZATION ANTENNA AT DIFFERENT
FREQUENCIES
V. CONCLUSION
A new dual-polarized planar antenna excited by two -shaped
strips is simulated, fabricated, and tested. The antenna has about
67% SWR impedance bandwidth, and the isolation is
more than 36 dB over the whole impedance bandwidth. The
maximum gain is 9.5 dBi. The radiation pattern across the
operating bandwidth is stable. It is suitable for GSM1800
(1.7–1.88 GHz), CDMA1900 (1.85–1.99 GHz), TD-SCDMA
(2.01–2.025 GHz) mobile communications, etc.
63
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