A Low-Profile Coplanar Dual-Polarized and Dual-Band Base Station Antenna Array

This paper presents a low-profile coplanar dual-polarized dual-band base station antenna array. A slotted patch antenna operating from 0.82 to 0.99 GHz with four shorting strips is proposed and analyzed. The four shorting strips are employed not only to improve the impedance matching in the lower band but also to remove the center part of the patch, thus making room for higher band dipoles operating from 1.68 to 2.86 GHz. The height of the proposed array is nearly half of the conventional base station array while other performances are guaranteed. The measured results show that the proposed antenna array has wide impedance bandwidths of 18.7% (0.82-0.99 GHz) and 57.9% (1.68-2.86 GHz) (VSWR < 2) with a low profile (0.109 lambda(0) at 820 MHz). The measured gains are 13.8 +/- 0.5 dB and 16.7 +/- 1 dB in lower and upper bands. Large front-to-back ratio (>24.6 dB) and high isolations (>30 and >25 dB in lower and upper bands, respectively) are achieved. The proposed antenna can be easily built with printed circuit board fabrication technique and applied in low profile multiband base stations for 2G/3G/4G and the next-generation systems.