A Wideband Slot-Coupled Stacked-Patch Array for Wireless Communications

In this letter, a novel slot-coupling feeding technique is used to realize a dual-polarized 2
$\,\times\,$
1 microstrip stacked patch array for mobile wireless communication systems. The array is intended as a basic module for base-station linear arrays, whose final size depending on beamwidth and gain requirements. Each array element is fed through two microstrip lines arranged on the basis of a sequential rotation technique. Each stacked square patch is excited through a square ring slot realized in the feeding network ground plane. Design procedure, simulation results and measurement data are presented for a 2
$\,\times\,$
1 array working in the GSM 1800–1900 band (1710–1910 MHz), UMTS band (1920–2170 MHz), ISM band (2400–2484 MHz), and UMTS 3G expansion band (2500–2690 MHz) or, alternatively, WiMAX band (2300–2700 MHz), with a resulting 45% percentage bandwidth (reflection coefficient
${<-}$
10 dB). Due to both the symmetry properties of the novel slot-coupling feeding configuration and the implementation of a sequential rotation technique, good results have been obtained in terms of port isolation and cross-polar radiation patterns.