Miniaturized broadband upward-folded dipole for base station applications

This paper proposes a compact and broadband dual-polarized base station antenna based on current path extension for 2G/3G/LTE base stations. The antenna is miniaturized by bending the end of the radiator to extend the current path. By bending the antenna, a new resonant mode is introduced to increase the bandwidth. In addition, a parasitic patch is placed above the antenna to improve impedance matching, and the introduction of artificial magnetic conductors reduces the profile of the antenna and significantly improves the radiation characteristics. The antenna radiator has a compact size of only 0.207×0.207λL2 at the lowest frequency with a total profile of 0.136 λL. The measured results indicate that the proposed antenna has a substantial bandwidth of 45.5% and more than 34 dB of high port isolation with a gain of 7.9 ± 0.5 dBi.