Low-profile broadband magnetoelectric dipole antenna based on printed circuit Board

A novel low-profile broadband magnetoelectric dipole antenna is proposed in the letter. Due to the 0.25λ₀ (λ₀ is the free-space wavelength at the center operating frequency.) profile of the vertical shorted cavity in conventional magnetoelectric dipole antennas, this work replaces the bulky metal cavity with an integrated printed circuit boards (PCB) structure employing an E-plane T-junction. Meanwhile, the TM₁₀ mode of the microstrip patch antenna is combined with the magnetoelectric dipole mode, and an aperture-coupled microstrip feed is adopted in place of the conventional Γ-shaped feed. This configuration effectively reduces the profile while maintaining a broad impedance bandwidth. A prototype is designed, fabricated, and measured based on PCB. The measured results demonstrate that the proposed antenna features a low profile of only 0.05λ₀ and owns over a 33.72 % impedance bandwidth (IBW) (5.3–7.45 GHz). In addition, an average gain of 5.1 dBi and relatively stable radiation patterns are obtained within the operating band. The simulated and measured results are in good agreement.