5G Wideband Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna Fed by a Single-Layer Corporate-Feed Network based on Ridge Gap Waveguide

This paper proposes a wideband magneto-electric (ME) dipole fed by a single-layer corporate-feed network based on the ridge gap waveguide (RGW) transmission line technology for 5G backhauling applications. The proposed antenna is composed of two layers. The top layer is the radiating layer that is composed of the 2 x 2 ME-dipole antenna element. The bottom layer is the corporate-feed network designed based on RGW. The proposed solution differs from the conventional solution where a slot antenna is fed by RGW and a cavity layer is to excite the radiating elements in order to provide a large spacing for the corporate-feed network in the design of the array antenna. Our new design allows for a smaller antenna volume as it excited the antenna directly by the RGW without the need of cavity layer. In addition, with the use of the ME-dipole radiating element, the bandwidth performance supported by the proposed design is larger as compared to the existing conventional designs. From the obtained simulation results, the proposed antenna produces S-11 <= -10 dB over 24 - 30 GHz resulting in a 22% fractional bandwidth. The maximum directivity over the operating bandwidth of the simulated 2 x 2 ME-dipole antenna element is approximately 15.4 dBi. Thus, the proposed antenna is a good candidate for low profile fixed-beam applications.