Aperture-Shared Dual-Band Antennas With Partially Reflecting Surfaces for Base-Station Applications

A new approach is proposed to develop aperture-shared dual-band antennas using partially reflecting surfaces (PRSs). A fully aperture-shared dual-band antenna consisting of a low-band antenna (LBA) and a high-band antenna (HBA) right below the LBA is first investigated. The aperture sharing has little influence on the LBA but causes a severe shielding effect on the HBA. To alleviate the shielding effect, a low-pass PRS is inserted between the LBA and HBA, forming an air-filled quasi-Fabry–Perot cavity, which can make compensation for the radiation from the HBA but with little influence on the LBA. The second PRS is introduced above the LBA to enhance the bandwidth (BW) for HBA. It is shown that the fully aperture-shared dual-band antenna achieves an impedance BW (
$\vert \text{S}11\vert < -15$
dB) of ~43.7% (0.68–1.07 GHz) for the LBA and ~45% (1.7–2.7 GHz) for the HBA with an average gain of ~8 dBi and stable radiation patterns. Based on the PRSs, an aperture-shared dual-band antenna subarray is finally developed for base-station applications, which covers the frequency bands of 0.68–0.96 and 1.7–2.7 GHz for 2G/3G/4G mobile communications.