A Printed Dipole Array With High Gain and Endfire Radiation

A printed dipole array operating at 2.45 GHz with endfire radiation is designed by using the method of maximization of power transmission efficiency. The elements of the antenna array are driven by the distribution of excitations obtained from the optimization process. It is shown that a four-element array has an endfire gain of 9.6 dBi and a front-to-back ratio of 5.6 dB, both of which can be improved by either introducing a strip reflector or more elements. For a six-element array, the measurements and simulations indicate the endfire gain reaches 11.7 dBi and the front-to-back ratio is increased to 17.7 dB.