Design of a Dualband Omnidirectional Planar Microstrip Antenna Array

This paper proposes and designs a new method of dualband omnidirectional planar microstrip antenna array. A cascade of transposed microstrip lines have been adapted to produce effective antenna structures that radiate omnidirectionally, with high efficiency, low reflection, and useful radiation patterns. In this paper, the antenna structure has been found to have low-pass characteristics due to the periodic discontinuities at the transposed junctions. The analysis and design of the low-pass characteristic are performed according to the filter theory of periodic structures and full-wave simulation. Therefore, a relatively higher frequency radiating array is appropriately designed with a low-pass filtering attribute, which prevents the lower frequency radiators from resonating at the relatively higher frequency. An air gap between adjacent transposed sections is proposed in order to enhance impedance matching, and a fork shape stub at the end is used as a virtual short point to enhance radiation at the higher frequency. Finally a single port dualband omnidirectional antenna array is obtained by locating the higher frequency radiating array with low-pass filtering attribute near the antenna feed and a relatively lower frequency radiating array at the end. An example of a dualband omnidirectional planar array is demonstrated experimentally, which operates at 2.32 ∼ 2.56GHz and 5.65 ∼ 6.10GHz with S11 < −10 dB and a stable radiation pattern, and corresponding gains of 7.0 ∼ 7.6 dBi and 6.9 ∼ 7.9 dBi respectively. Received 21 November 2011, Accepted 27 December 2011, Scheduled 9 March 2012 * Corresponding author: Zhijun Zhang ([email protected]). 102 Wei, Zhang, and Feng