The magneto-electric multipole antenna - A new wideband antenna with pattern and polarization diversity

A wideband four-port integrated antenna that is capable of exciting four different radiation patterns is presented. The antenna designated as the magneto-electric multipole consists of four dual-polarized magneto-electric dipoles arranged in a 2 by 2 array configuration above a ground plane. A two layer matching network is used to combine the signals from the four dual-polarized dipoles to produce two orthogonal broadside modes and two orthogonal conical modes. The performance of the proposed antenna is studied computationally. It can achieve about 27.2% overlapped bandwidth with the centre frequency of 3.9GHz. The isolation between any two ports is greater than 15dB. The two orthogonal broadside modes exhibit about 12 dBi average gain. While for the two orthogonal conical modes, an average gain of 7 dBi can be achieved. The measured radiation patterns of the four degenerate modes are stable within the operating band. ©2010 IEEE.