Design and Fabrication of Wideband Dual-Polarized Dipole Array for 5G Wireless Systems

This paper presents simulation and measurement results of a wideband planar phased array for 5G. The desired wideband operation is achieved using a tightly coupled dipole array (TCDA). The proposed array consists of tightly coupled dipole units in dual-polarized configuration, and two thin parasitic layers separated apart by air gap for wide-angle impedance matching (WAIM). The top matching layer is loaded with a metasurface composed of sub-wavelength split-ring resonators (SRRs) to improve the scanning performance of array. The infinite array achieved a bandwidth from 23.5 to 29.5 GHz, with voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) < 3 for scan up to +/- 60 degrees in E, H and D-plane. The array has a height of only 0.144 lambda(l), and it exhibits high gains, high efficiency > 71% (largest scan angle) and good cross-polarization. The simulations are validated by fabrication and measurement of an array prototype, which indicates agreement to simulated values. The proposed dual-polarized antenna array can be deployed in the future beam scanning applications for 5G.