Series-Fed Dual-Polarized Antenna Arrays for Single-Layer Photolithography Fabrication

This letter proposes a novel method to design series-fed (SF) dual-polarized antenna arrays. The proposed antenna arrays consist of $nm$ radiating elements placed in $n \times m$ grids, where $n$ and $m$ are arbitrary odd numbers. The proposed arrays are fed by two probes, each of which is used to excite one of the TM₁₀ and TM₀₁ modes in the middle patch, and hence, one of two orthogonal linear polarizations. For each polarization, the middle patch operates also as a four-way power divider to distribute the signals that excite this polarization across the array. Both the radiating elements and the feeding network of the antenna array are realized on a single metal layer, which makes the proposed antenna array a low-cost solution. The proposed antenna concept has been verified by the design and measurements of a ${\text {3}} \times {\text {3}}$ antenna array. The prototype operates over 5.53 GHz to 5.87 GHz frequency range and achieves a maximum gain of 15.8 dBi at 5.84 GHz.