Wideband High-Gain Dual-Polarized Array Antenna with Bottom-Coupled Feeding Structure

A 32 × 32 dual-polarized high-gain high-efficiency antenna array with an enhanced wide operating band applied in remote telemetry systems is proposed. The basic element is composed of a cavity with stepped ridges and a bottom coupling feeding balun. By improving the profile of the stepped ridge, wideband radiation and miniaturization are realized. The balun is designed to coupling feed in a wideband and makes the elements easy to mass integrate with the feeding network. Compact air-filled stripline networks (AFSN) are used to feed the small size antenna elements and have the characteristics of low transmission loss. The AFSN is finally fed by a double-layer ridge waveguide network (RWN). The complete array integrates the wideband miniaturized elements and the feeding networks, achieving an operating band of 57.1%. An array prototype is designed and fabricated. The measured results show that the operating bandwidth ranges from 10 GHz -18 GHz. The measured gain varies from 33.4 to 38.2 dBi. All physical apertures of the array are radiation apertures, and the antenna efficiency reaches 57%, which proves that the proposed antenna effectively widens the bandwidth of the high-efficiency feeding network integrated array.