A Differentially-Driven Dual-Polarized Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna

A novel differentially-driven dual-polarized antenna is proposed in this communication. It is a magneto-electric dipole antenna whose gain and beamwidth keep constant along frequency within the operation bandwidth. If the antenna is ideally symmetrical, its differential port-to-port isolation is theoretically infinite. Due to the differentially-driven scheme, its cross-polarization level can be very low. Measurement shows that the proposed antenna achieves a wide impedance bandwidth of 68% (0.95 to 1.92 GHz) for differential reflection coefficients less than -10 dB and high differential port-to-port isolation of better than 36 dB within the bandwidth. The 3-dB-gain bandwidth of the proposed antenna is 62% (1.09 to 2.08 GHz), and the radiation pattern across it is stable and unidirectional. The broadside gain within the 3-dB-gain bandwidth ranges from 6.6 to 9.6 dBi. The cross-polarization level is lower than -23 dB across the 3-dB-gain bandwidth. The proposed antenna is the first differentially-driven dual-polarized magneto-electric dipole antenna. A feeding structure is specially designed to fit the differentially-driven scheme, and also to achieve wide impedance and gain bandwidths.