A Wideband Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna

A new wideband magneto-electric dipole antenna composed of a horizontal bowtie electric dipole and a vertically oriented folded shorted patch antenna is designed. The antenna is excited by a stair-shaped probe feed without the need of an additional balun. A prototype was fabricated and measured. Results show that an impedance bandwidth of 95.2%, with ${rm SWR}leq 2$ from 1.65 GHz to 4.65 GHz, was achieved. Stable radiation pattern with low cross polarization, low back radiation, nearly identical E- and H-plane patterns and an antenna gain of 7.9 $pm$ 0.9 dBi was found over the operating frequencies.