Compact magneto‐electric dipole antenna for LTE femtocell base stations

A compact magneto‐electric dipole antenna for long‐term evolution femtocell base stations is proposed. It consists of horizontal defected semi‐circular patches that act as electric dipole and vertical rectangular patches that work as magnetic dipole shorted to ground plane. By modifying the regular square ground into minimum ground and by choosing an appropriate height between the horizontal patches and ground, the size of the antenna is considerably reduced without compromising the bandwidth. The overall dimension of the proposed antenna is (68 × 56 × 20)mm 3 , which is 82.4% less than the original antenna of dimension (120 × 120 × 30)mm 3 . At S 11 = −10 dB, the simulated and measured impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna is 65.7% (2.03–4.02 GHz) and 63.3% (2.05–3.95 GHz), respectively. Stable radiation pattern at both planes and moderate gain of 5 dBi are obtained.