Wideband microstrip magnetoelectric dipole antenna with stripline aperture‐coupled excitation

A novel wideband microstrip magnetoelectric (ME) dipole antenna excited by a stripline aperture‐coupled feeding structure is proposed and demonstrated. An antenna prototype is fabricated with low‐cost standard printed circuit board process on three substrates and tested. Measured results show that an impedance bandwidth for voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) < 2 is ∼42% (10.2–15.6 GHz), and a measured boresight gain is ∼7.8 ± 0.7 dBi. Almost stable and symmetrical unidirectional radiation patterns with low in cross‐polarization and backward radiation are obtained over the entire operating frequency band. By employing the proposed radiating element, two types of cavity (one is a square cavity, the other is a circular cavity) are introduced for enhancing the antenna gain and investigated. After analysis, a better one is chosen to be fabricated and measured. A measured impedance bandwidth for VSWR < 2 is ∼45% (10.1–15.9GHz), and a measured boresight gain is ∼8.9 ± 0.5 dBi. The measured average gain is ∼1.1 dBi larger than that of the radiating element. The measured radiation patterns, cross‐polarization levels and half power beam width are almost the same as that of the radiating element except that the measured front‐to‐back ratios are improved several decibels.