576

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 15, 2016

Broadband Dual-Polarized Omnidirectional Antenna

for 2G/3G/LTE/WiFi Applications
He Huang, Ying Liu, Member, IEEE, and Shuxi Gong

AbstractA broadband dual-polarized omnidirectional antenna

is presented in this letter for the 2G/3G/LTE/WiFi communication
systems. It consists of one vertically polarized (VP) element and one
horizontally polarized (HP) element. The VP element is composed
of a ground plane and a center-fed discone coupled by a circular
patch with four shorting legs, while the HP element is composed of
a printed dipole array, a feeding network, and four pairs of parasitical branches. Through such deliberate design, a broad bandwidth
from 820 MHz to more than 6 GHz (about more than 152%) for VP
and from 1530 to 2950 MHz (about 63%) for HP can be achieved
while keeping the antenna compact. Good port isolation, omnidirectional patterns in horizontal plane, along with acceptable cross
polarization and gain are also obtained. Details of the antenna design as well as experimental results are presented and discussed.

TABLE I
DIMENSIONS AND BANDWIDTH OF DUAL-POLARIZED OMNIDIRECTIONAL
ANTENNAS

Index TermsDiscone antenna, dual-polarized antenna, omnidirectional pattern, printed dipole antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

OR ENHANCING spectrum efciency and combating

the multipath fading in a dense environment [1], polarization diversity technology [2] that compounds multiple
antennas with different polarizations has been widely employed
in modern wireless communication system [3][5]. However,
when it comes to some special application occasions where
360 full coverage property is needed, the ordinary dual-polarized antenna no longer satises the demand. Hence, the
dual-polarized antennas that possess omnidirectional radiation
characteristics emerge as the times require. With the ability
of reducing communication blind zone and serving a large
area, the proposed antenna can be applied in many wireless
communication systems, such as indoor distributed systems,
portable access points, and mobile base stations.
Several designs have been investigated as the potential
candidates for the dual-polarized omnidirectional antenna.
For example, in [6], three notch-antennas and wire antenna
are combined for polarization diversity reception. It has a
Manuscript received April 07, 2015; revised May 19, 2015 and June 29,
2015; accepted July 17, 2015. Date of publication July 21, 2015; date of
current version March 04, 2016. This work was supported by the Program for
New Century Excellent Talents in University under Grant NCET-11-0690,
the National Science and Technology Major Project of China under Grant
2014ZX03001014, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China
under Grant No. 61372001.
The authors are with the National Key Laboratory of Antennas and
Microwave Technology, Collaborative Innovation Center of Information
Sensing and Understanding, Xidian University, Xian 710071, China (e-mail:
liuying@mail.xidian.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LAWP.2015.2458981

narrow bandwidth (17% and 8.5% for the H-pol. and V-pol.
antenna) and 10 dB isolation level. In [7], a novel planar
slot antenna is developed. It has an impedance bandwidth
of 10.6% and high mutual coupling. By cutting two orthogonal slots on the walls of a slender columnar cuboid, [8] can
operate at WLAN (2.42.48 GHz) band with port isolation
larger than 33.5 dB. Impedance bandwidth of dual-polarization
ceiling-mounted antenna in [9] ranges from 2.3 to 2.7 GHz,
covering the TD-SCDMA band (2.32.4 GHz). Dual-polarized omnidirectional antennas described in [10] and [11] can
provide an overlapped bandwidth of 3.9% (2.42.484) and
25% (1.72.2 GHz), respectively. With six dipoles (for H-pol.)
nested between the asymmetric biconical (for V-pol.), [12]
can achieve a bandwidth of 17.4% (806960 MHz) with the
vertically polarized (VP) element, and an overlapping bandwidth of 35% (18802700 MHz) for the VP and horizontally
polarized (HP) elements. By integrating an improved discone and ag-shaped dipoles, [13] could operate from 671 to
3580 MHz for VP, and from 1.7 to 3.0 GHz for HP, having the
most attractive (overlapped) bandwidth in recently published
literature.
Based on plenty of study of the articles mentioned above, a
broadband dual-polarized omnidirectional antenna is presented.
Compared to other designs shown in Table I, the antenna developed in this letter has wider (overlapped) bandwidth and occupies smaller volume.
The rest of the letter is organized as follows: Specic antenna
design will be described in Section II, and Section III will dis-

1536-1225 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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HUANG et al.: BROADBAND DUAL-POLARIZED OMNIDIRECTIONAL ANTENNA FOR 2G/3G/LTE/WiFi APPLICATIONS

577

Fig. 1. Geometry of VP antenna.

cuss the simulated and measured results. Finally, a brief conclusion of this letter will be conducted in Section IV.
II. DUAL-POLARIZED OMNIDIRECTIONAL ANTENNA
A. VP Element
Based on the mature study of the monopole antennas [14], [15], a discone antenna is initially adopted as
the basic radiator for VP operation, as shown in Fig. 1. It is
converted from the biconical antenna with one of the cones
replaced by a disk-shaped ground plane. Then, a circular
patch for improving high-frequency pattern is situated above
the discone with a distance of 15 mm (h2). However, our
requirements for much wider bandwidth still cannot be
satised. To solve the problem without burden the antenna size,
four shorting legs that act as distributed resistance loading are
added. This miniaturization technology enables the electrical
length of the antenna to be extended, thus improving the
impedance characteristics of the antenna. It is worth noting that
the VP antenna has simpler three-dimensional structure and is
easy to fabricate manually compared to the one shown in [16].
The nal dimensions of the VP antenna derived using the
High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS ver. 13) are listed
as follows (unit: mm):
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.
B. HP Element
Fig. 2 shows the conguration of the HP antenna. Four concentrically arranged dipoles and its feeding network are printed
on both sides of the substrate. Here, the four-way power divider
can provide signals having equal amplitude and phase. Then,
four pairs of parasitical branches aiming to compensate the reactance of the antenna and improve antenna performance are
added at the edge of the top surface of the substrate. With such a
symmetric placement, a clockwise, in-phase current ow will be
generated in azimuth plane, as indicated in Fig. 3, thus forming
an omnidirectional radiation in azimuth plane.
The optimized parameters of the HP antenna are given as follows (unit: mm):
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.

Fig. 2. Geometry of HP antenna. (a) Perspective view. (b) Expanded view.

Fig. 3. Current distribution of HP antenna at 2.2 GHz.

C. Dual-Polarized Omnidirectional Antenna

By inserting a large clearance between the VP and HP antennas (about 45 mm), the dual-polarized omnidirectional antenna could be accomplished.
In order to get a further understanding of each polarization
elements working principle, -parameters under different circumstances are studied. Fig. 4(a) gives the reection efcient
of VP antenna when there is a single discone (case 1), discone
coupled by a patch with only two legs (case 2), discone integrated with four legs patch by a copper ring (case 3), and the
proposed one. It can be concluded that the function of shorted
loading structure is to lower the cut frequency of the VP element, that the number of shorting legs plays an important role
in adjusting VP bandwidth, and that the absence of copper ring
can improve the impedance matching while reducing weight.
What is more, to get an intuitive impression on how the
parasitical branches effect the HP bandwidth, Fig. 4(b) plots

578

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 15, 2016

Fig. 5. Photograph of the proposed antenna.

Fig. 6. (a) Simulated and (b) measured -parameters of the proposed antenna.

Fig. 4.

and

under different circumstances.

the curves of
when the parasitical branches are added
(the proposed one) or not (case 4). It can be seen that when
the branches are appended, an additional resonance appears,
making the impedance matching and bandwidth much better.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
To validate the designs of the proposed antenna, a prototype
has been fabricated. Its photograph is exhibited in Fig. 5. The
VP element is made of 0.3-mm-thick copper, and the HP element is fabricated on an FR-4 epoxy substrate with relative
dielectric constant of 4.4, loss tangent of 0.02, and thickness
of 1 mm. Both VP and HP elements are connected to standard
50- SMA connectors through coaxial cables. In practical fabrication process, a paperboard will be placed between the discone
and ground plane of VP element, and a low-dielectric-constant
foam material will be inserted between VP and HP elements,
both for xation.
The antenna was measured by an Anritsu 37269A vector network analyzer in a fully automated anechoic chamber. Its simulated and measured -parameters, including the port isolation
, are given in Fig. 6. It can be seen that the VP antenna
has a 10-dB impedance bandwidth from 820 to 6000 MHz
for simulation and 8006000 MHz for measurement [covering
the GSM850/900, DCS 1800, PCS 1900, UMTS, the enhanced
TD-LTE (up to 3.5 GHz), and WiFi (2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz)], and
that the HP antenna has a 10-dB impedance bandwidth from
1530 to 2950 MHz for simulation and 1500 to 2980 MHz for
measurement [covering the DCS 1800, PCS 1900, UMTS, LTE

Fig. 7. Measured normalized far-eld radiation patterns for VP element.

(a) -plane (H-plane). (b) -plane (E-plane).

2300/2500 (23052400/25002690 MHz), and WiFi 2.4 GHz].

Moreover, the isolation across the overlapping frequency band
is better than 33 dB for simulation and 31 dB for measurement.
The slight discrepancy between simulated and measured consequence might be attributed to the impact of coaxial cables,
fabrication imperfections, and testing environment.
The measured normalized far-eld radiation patterns are depicted in Figs. 7 and 8. Both VP and HP elements show omnidirectional patterns in H-plane ( -plane). The pattern ripples for
VP in H-plane are less than 0.7, 3.3, 3.2, 3.6, and 5.4 dB at 0.9,
2.3, 3.8, 4.2, and 5.8 GHz, and the ones for HP are less than 2.1,
2, and 2.9 dB at 1.6, 2.2, and 2.8 GHz, respectively. Though the
pattern ripples in H-plane increase inevitably at the higher frequency, it still radiates in a monopole manner. Moreover, due
to the shielding effect of the circular ground plane in higher

HUANG et al.: BROADBAND DUAL-POLARIZED OMNIDIRECTIONAL ANTENNA FOR 2G/3G/LTE/WiFi APPLICATIONS

579

HP. High port isolation larger than 31 dB is also obtained.

Having such advantages as broad (overlapped) bandwidth,
high isolation, acceptable cross polarization and stable gains,
the proposed antenna can nd applications in many modern
communication systems such as indoor distributed systems,
portable access points, and mobile base stations.
REFERENCES
Fig. 8. Measured normalized far eld radiation patterns for HP element.
(a) -plane (H-plane). (b) -plane (E-plane).

Fig. 9. Simulated and measured gains of the proposed antenna.

frequency band, some tilt of the maximum radiation direction

of VP in elevation plane occurs. It can also be observed that
the measured cross-polarization level within the operating bandwidth is lower than 15 and 20 dB for VP and HP separately.
As shown in Fig. 9, simulated gains of VP (HP) antenna range
from 1.3 to 6.5 dBi (from 2.4 to 5.6 dBi), while the measured
gains of VP (HP) antenna range from 2 to 4.7 dBi (from 2.3 to
4.9 dBi). The phenomenon that the measured gains are less than
the simulated one is due to the losses of the feeding network,
fabrication error, and the effect of measurement environment.
IV. CONCLUSION
A broadband dual-polarized omnidirectional antenna has
been demonstrated in this letter for the 2G/3G/LTE/WiFi
communication systems. The antenna consists of one VP
element and one HP element. The VP element can get an enhanced impedance bandwidth of more than 152% by placing a
top-coupled shorting structure over the traditional discone. The
bandwidth of HP antenna can be broadened to as high as 63%
with the help of parasitical branches. Good omnidirectional
radiation patterns in H-plane are observed for both VP and

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