A generalized crossed dipole antenna, the Fourtear antenna

A generalized form of a crossed dipole antenna, the Fourtear antenna, has been designed and tested. The Fourtear antenna is a promising dual-polarized broadband antenna element. The antenna consists of four identical teardrop elements, but the horizontal elements are positioned perpendicular to the vertical elements. The radiating element is printed on a dielectric material that is backed with a finite ground plane to achieve a high-gain unidirectional pattern. The antenna provides more than 10:1 impedance bandwidth and 2:1 pattern bandwidth for each feed position. The radiation patterns are unidirectional patterns with HPBW (half-power beam width) values of 50/spl deg//spl sim/ 60/spl deg/ and 70/spl deg//spl sim/ 90/spl deg/ in the E- and H-planes, respectively. The peak gain is between 7 to 11 dBi over the full bandwidth. The antenna characteristics are not identical for each feed position due to the asymmetric antenna geometry. This paper provides the fundamental ideas on how to design a dual-polarized broadband antenna.