A Novel Compact Wideband Tightly Coupled Bowtie Antenna

A wideband Tightly Coupled Dipole Array (TCDA) is presented in this letter, which consists of a printed bowtie element, a wideband slot balun feeding network, a multi-section microstrip feedline and a wide angle impendence matching layer(WAim). This type of antenna utilizes the coupling between unit antennas to achieve a wide bandwidth. The bowtie element and the balun are printed on a vertical printed circuit board. The unit cell is 0.5λhigh×0.5λhigh (λhigh is the free wavelength at the highest end of the frequency band). Simulated results show that the antenna can achieve a 3.8:1 bandwidth with VSWR≤ 3 at broadside and achieve a 4:1 bandwidth within ±45° scanning range in E and H planes with VSWR ≤ 3.