A Compact, Scanning Tightly Coupled Dipole Array With Parasitic Strips for Next-Generation Wireless Applications

A wideband one-dimensional tightly coupled dipole array (TCDA) with enhanced impedance matching is presented in this letter, which consists of eight printed dipole units, a coplanar waveguide with ground feeding network, and two rows of parasitic strips. The feed structure is simple and small with good ports isolation. A 1 × 8 prototype was fabricated and tested. A four-channel phase-amplitude control board was designed to validate the beam-steering function of the proposed TCDA. This array has a height of only 0.176 λlow, and it exhibits a measured 10 dB returnloss operating bandwidth of 92.7% from 2.2 to 6.0 GHz for the scan angle up to ±45° broadside radiation. The cross-polarization suppression level is better than 15 dB in the whole scanning range. The measured results show high gains> 6.9 dBi, high efficiency> 67%, and low sidelobe level (SLL) <; -10 dB over the operating band and scanning angles. This antenna array can be applied in the future massive multiple-input-multiple-output beamforming systems for 5G and other applications.