A WIDE-BEAM BASE STATION ANTENNA WITH MODULAR RADIATOR FOR RECONFIGURABILITY

This paper presents a reconfigurable wide-beam antenna with a modular main radiator for base station applications. The addition of new spectrum and the path to 5G create unique antenna requirements in terms of patterns and impedance matching capabilities. The antenna in this paper exhibits a wide azimuth beamwidth up to approximately 180◦ and implements a modular approach where the antenna can be reconfigured for impedance matching requirements. Two configurations of the wide-beam antenna are presented; the first configuration covers the 1.7–2.7 GHz band for 3G/4G/LTE applications where multiple wireless carriers would use the same antenna as a neutral site. This antenna provides wide-beam operation and a 10-dB return loss from approximately 1.64–2.76 GHz. The measured return loss over the 1.7–2.7 GHz band is better than 13 dB. A second configuration of the antenna is tuned for performance from 1.9–2.4 GHz where measured return loss better than 19 dB is achieved in this band. Simulated and measured return losses and patterns are presented that show very good agreement between simulation and measurement, and thorough parametric pattern analysis is presented for the baseline antenna configuration.