Integrated Wideband Dual-Polarized ME-Dipole Planar Antenna Array with Tight Coupled Elements

We present a new integrated wideband dual-polarized magneto-electric dipole antenna array merging the concepts of tight coupled elements and gap-waveguide feeding technology. Our proposal consists of a 4 × 4 directly fed unit elements, with passive-behaving elements at the borders. The radiating element was chosen as a modified bowtie antenna, with slight transition for good impedance matching control. The antenna is fed by an air filled cavity backed layer, placed directly above two layers of a modified inverted microstrip gap waveguide. The complete device can be easily manufactured by low-cost printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication processes. Numerical results demonstrate an impedance bandwidth of 68.6%(16.1 GHz-32.9 GHz) for the vertical polarization and 73.3% (15.2 GHz-32.8 GHz) for horizontal polarization, considering a VSWR (voltage standing wave ratio)<2.