A planar-printed E-shaped omnidirectional magneto-electric dipole antenna for WWAN/LTE applications

A planar-printed E-shaped dual-wideband magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna for WWAN/LTE applications is proposed. Through changing the surface-current distributions, an E-shaped electric-dipole structure is used to provide a dual-wideband. Besides, to reduce the size of the antenna and improve impedance matching, a novel feeding structure designed with inverted U-shaped tapered line and meandering L-shaped line is introduced. Finally, without conventional vertical ground planes, a small-size one is printed on the back side of the substrate to attain stable gains and omnidirectional radiation patterns. The antenna prototype can attain a bandwidth of 31.6% (0.80-1.10 GHz) with a stable gain of 3.1 +/- 0.5 dBi for the lower band, and a bandwidth of 47.5% (1.67-2.71 GHz) with a gain of 3.9 +/- 0.7 dBi for the upper band, covering the frequency bands for WWAN/LTE systems. In comparison with the existing ME dipole antennas, the proposed antenna can be easily fabricated at low cost which makes it suitable for WWAN/LTE applications. (c) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1734-1739, 2014