Vertical Planar Printed Unidirectional Antenna

A novel printed vertically oriented unidirectional antenna is proposed. The proposed antenna is composed of a bowtie-shaped electric dipole, a loop antenna that works as a magnetic dipole, and a microstrip-to-stripline transition balun. All of them are printed in the same plane perpendicular to the ground. With a single vertical planar structure as well as large beamwidth, the proposed antenna would find itself suitable for improving the H-plane maximum steering angle when involved in an array application. The antenna operates at 2.6 GHz with an impedance bandwidth of 17.1% for SWR ≤ 2, stable unidirectional radiation pattern with low cross polarization, low back radiation, nearly identical E- and H-plane patterns, and stable gain of around 6.5 dBi over the operating frequencies. The antenna also fulfills the requirement for outdoor applications as it is direct current (dc) grounded.