A wideband slot-coupled stacked-patch array for wireless communications

In this letter, a novel slot-coupling feeding technique is used to realize a dual-polarized 2 × 1 microstrip stacked patch array for mobile wireless communication systems. The array is intended as a basic module for base-station linear arrays, whose final size depending on beamwidth and gain requirements. Each array element is fed through two microstrip lines arranged on the basis of a sequential rotation technique. Each stacked square patch is excited through a square ring slot realized in the feeding network ground plane. Design procedure, simulation results and measurement data are presented for a 2 × 1 array working in the GSM 1800-1900 band (1710-1910 MHz), UMTS band (1920-2170 MHz), ISM band (2400-2484 MHz), and UMTS 3G expansion band (2500-2690 MHz) or, alternatively, WiMAX band (2300-2700 MHz), with a resulting 45% percentage bandwidth (reflection coefficient <-10 dB). Due to both the symmetry properties of the novel slot-coupling feeding configuration and the implementation of a sequential rotation technique, good results have been obtained in terms of port isolation and cross-polar radiation patterns. © 2010 IEEE.