A wideband magnetoelectric dipole antenna for 4G/5G communication

In this letter, a wideband magnetoelectric (ME) dipole antenna for 4G/5G communication is proposed. The bandwidth of the antenna is greatly enhanced by loading two pairs of metallic circular loops on the planar electric dipole. With the loops, the antenna impedance bandwidth in terms of 10 dB is improved from 48.3% (1.98-3.24 GHz) to 86.8% (1.465-3.71 GHz), that is, 79.7% bandwidth enhancement is achieved. The surface current of the proposed antenna is analyzed in detail. It shows that when the length of the loops approaches half a wavelength, the loops contribute new resonant modes, thereby increasing the impedance bandwidth. A prototype is fabricated and measured. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated counterparts. Meanwhile, the antenna gain ranges from 7.42 to 12.8 dBi across the operational frequency region. Stable radiation patterns with low crosspolarization levels are obtained in both E- and H-plane.