Stripline and Microstrip Beamforming Networks for Twin-Beam Base-Station Antennas

Stripline and microstrip beamforming networks are investigated for dual-slant twin-beam base station antenna applications. The beamforming network combining stripline hybrid coupler with directional couplers provides a return loss better than 20 dB for all ports and stable output amplitude across the 3.3−4.2 GHz band. Additionally, the stripline network has an average 0.26 dB insertion loss and 45% reduction in size compared to microstrip network.