Lightweight, Low-Cost, Tightly Coupled Dipole Array Antenna for Wireless Power Transfer

A lightweight, low-cost, tightly coupled dipole array (TCDA) antenna is presented for wireless power transfer. A simple low-cost H-plane scanning booster layer is first introduced to improve the scanning ability in H-plane. Therefore, a consistent E- and H-plane scanning performance is achieved for the designed unit cell. In addition, a new 1-to-4 differential feed network using power dividers and exponentially tapered baluns is designed and utilized to excite the unit cell. Finally, a 5 x 13 finite array antenna prototype was designed, fabricated, and measured for wide beam scanning performance verification. Both the measured and simulated results confirm that the fabricated array antenna can have a wide and consistent scanning range of +/- 50 degrees in both E-plane and H-plane over 4.3:1 impedance bandwidth. In addition, low cross-polarization levels of less than -30.5 dB are achieved for the fabricated low top-to-ground profile (0.4 lambda(h)) TCDA antenna.