290
16, 2017
A Multiband Dual-Polarized Omnidirectional
Antenna for Indoor Wireless Communication
Systems
Da Guo, Kai He, Yong Zhang, and Mei Song
Abstract—In this letter, a multiband dual-polarized omnidirec-
tional antenna is studied. Two printed circular dipole arrays are
employed for horizontal polarization (HP), while a simplified dis-
cone antenna is used for vertical polarization (VP). The two dipole
arrays are fixed on the top and bottom of the VP element, respec-
tively, and combined by a diplexer to make up the HP elements.
The VP element is composed of three radiation patches with an
external profile of a discone shape, which significantly lower the
antenna’s fabrication cost. To realize a compact structure, the HP
element together with a circular patch works as the ground plane
for the VP element. Simulated and measured results show that the
frequency bands of 690 MHz–1.03 GHz and 1.69–3.21 GHz for
HP and 770–980 MHz and 1.70–3.75 GHz for VP are achieved.
Good port isolation, low cross-polarization level, and omnidirec-
tional radiation patterns for both HP and VP in the azimuth plane
are obtained over the whole working bands, which indicate that the
proposed antenna can be widely used for indoor multiple-input–
multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems.
Index Terms—Dual-polarized antenna, multiband antenna,
omnidirectional antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
ITH the tremendous developments of modern wireless
W communication industry, more and more mobile com-
munication systems have been designed and commercially used
to provide better communication services. Thus, different fre-
quency bands are assigned for different systems, such as 824–
960 MHz for GSM900/CDMA800 systems, 1710–2170 MHz
for WCDMA/CDMA2000 systems, and 2570–2620 MHz/
1880–1920 MHz/2300–2400 MHz/2496–2690 MHz for LTE
band 38/39/40/41 [1]. Obviously, 806–960 MHz and 1710–
2690 MHz bands are the most important and widely used bands
for the currently commercial communication services. Thus, an-
tennas that can simultaneously operate in the two bands are in
great demand [2], [3].
Manuscript received February 13, 2016; revised May 13, 2016; accepted May
24, 2016. Date of publication May 27, 2016; date of current version February 27,
2017. This work was supported by 863 Project 2014AA01A701, architecture
and key technology research and development of 5G wireless dense networks.
D. Guo, Y. Zhang, and M. Song are with the Beijing Key Labora-
tory of Work Safety Intelligent Monitoring, Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China (e-mail: guoda@bupt.edu.cn;
yongzhang@bupt.edu.cn; songm@bupt.edu.cn).
K. He is with the National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on
Antennas and Microwaves, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail:
hekai-xidian@outlook.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2016.2573840
1536-1225 © 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
TABLE I
BANDWIDTH OF THE PRESENTED ANTENNAS FOR HP (UNIT: GHZ)
References [3] [5] [6] [7]
Bandwidth 1.88–2.7 1.7–3 2.39–2.49 2.37– 2.51
References [8] [9] [10] Proposed antenna
Bandwidth 2.51–2.69 1.7–2.2 1.53–2.95 0.69–1.03 and 1.69–3.21
As the indispensable technology for the 4G and 5G com-
munication systems, multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO)
technology requires antennas to have the advantages of improv-
ing spectrum efficiency, mitigating polarization mismatch, and
increasing the channel capacity. Dual-polarized antenna with
polarization diversity technology is a promising candidate for
MIMO systems and has attracted great attention of researchers.
Especially in complex multipath environments, dual-polarized
antennas with omnidirectional radiation pattern can effectively
improve the performance of indoor MIMO communication sys-
tems [4], [5]. Hence, several omnidirectional dual-polarized an-
tennas for 806–960 MHz and 1710–2690 MHz bands are pre-
sented [6]–[10]. In [3], a dual-polarized antenna with omnidirec-
tional radiation patterns is designed. The antenna is composed
of an asymmetric biconical for vertical polarization (VP) and
a printed dipole array for horizontal polarization (HP). An op-
erating band from 806 to 960 MHz for the VP element and an
overlapping band from 1880 to 2700 MHz for both the VP and
HP elements were realized. However, due to the limitation of
printed dipoles’ bandwidth and antenna size, the HP element
cannot cover the 806–960 MHz band. By combining an im-
proved discone and flag-shaped dipoles, the antenna presented
in [5] could operate from 671 to 3580 MHz for VP while from 1.7
to 3.0 GHz for HP. Though attractive bandwidths are obtained,
the HP element also cannot operate at 806–960 MHz band. A
dual-polarization slot antenna for indoor small-cell MIMO sys-
tems is analyzed in [8]. High cross-polarization discrimination
of 26.4 dB and high port isolation of larger than 40 dB are pro-
vided, but the bandwidth is only 180 MHz (2.51–2.69 GHz).
In [10], the bandwidths for the HP and VP antenna elements
are expanded to as broad as 63% (1530–2950 MHz) and 152%
(820 MHz to more than 6 GHz). The HP element still cannot
operate at the 806–960 MHz band.
To the best of our knowledge, the HP antenna elements of the
published designs cannot cover the 806–960 MHz band, some
of which are shown in Table I. Thus, the polarization diversity
GUO et al.: MULTIBAND DUAL-POLARIZED OMNIDIRECTIONAL ANTENNA FOR INDOOR WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna. (a) Perspective view of HP element
1. (b) Perspective view of HP element 2. (c) Side view of the proposed antenna.
at 806–960 MHz is not realized actually, which deteriorates the
performance of MIMO systems at this operating band.
In this letter, a novel dual-polarized omnidirectional dis-
tributed antenna for indoor wireless communication systems
is studied. The proposed antenna is composed of a simplified
discone antenna for VP and two printed dipole arrays for HP.
The VP element that consists of three radiation patches can sig-
nificantly lower the antenna’s fabrication cost. The HP element
1 and HP element 2 are located at the top and bottom of the dis-
cone, respectively, and combined by a commercially available
diplexer. Moreover, the HP element 2 is also employed as the
ground plane of the VP element, which forms a compact struc-
ture. The HP and VP elements can cover the 806–960 and 1710–
2690 MHz bands simultaneously. Details of the antenna design
are presented in Section II; results are presented and discussed
in Section III, while a brief conclusion is given in Section IV.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The geometry of the proposed antenna with detailed dimen-
sions is shown in Fig. 1. The proposed dual-polarized antenna
consists of two HP elements and a VP element. The two HP
elements are located on the top and bottom of the VP element,
respectively.
As shown in Fig. 1(a), HP element 1 is composed of a three-
way power divider and three concentrically arranged dipoles
with three parasitical strips that are printed on both sides of the
substrate. In order to provide omnidirectional radiation patterns
291
Fig. 2. Current distribution of the HP elements. (a) HP element 1 at 2.2 GHz.
(b) HP element 2 at 0.92 GHz.
in the horizontal plane, the three-way power divider is used
to excite the dipoles with signals having equal amplitude and
phase. Three parasitical strips are printed on the edge of the
substrate to compensate the reactance of the antenna for band-
width improvement. A coaxial cable with 50-Ω impedance is
employed to feed and fix HP element 1. One end of the coaxial
cable is directly connected to the high-pass port of the diplexer.
The inner conductor of the other end of the cable is joined to
the feeding point 1, whereas the outer conductor of the cable is
connected to the center of the three dipoles.
The structure of HP element 2 is illustrated in Fig. 1(b).
Three pairs of dipoles are concentrically printed on the opposite
sides of the substrate to realize omnidirectional radiation
patterns in azimuth plane. The dipoles are fed by three pairs of
tapered strips that are also printed on the opposite sides of the
substrate. On the top plane, the tapered strips are connected to
a three-way power divider that is employed to provide signals
with equal amplitude and phase. On the bottom plane, the other
tapered strips are integrated with a truncated ground plane. The
HP element 2 is fed by a coaxial cable with 50-Ω impedance as
well. One end of the coaxial cable is directly connected to the
low-pass port of the diplexer. The inner conductor of the other
end of the cable is connected to the feeding point 2, whereas the
outer conductor of the cable is joined to the truncated ground
plane.
To further analyze the operation principles of the HP ele-
ments, the current distributions of the two dipole arrays are
analyzed and shown in Fig. 2. Clockwise currents with equal
amplitude and coincident phase are observed in the azimuth
plane, so omnidirectional radiations are generated for the HP
elements in azimuth plane. Meanwhile, counterclockwise cur-
rents are generated on the parasitical strips of HP element 1,
which could compensate the reactance of the antenna for band-
width improvement.
A commercially available diplexer with compact size is em-
ployed to combine the two HP elements and mounted below HP
element 2 [11]. The diplexer consists of a low-pass port for dc
to 950 MHz band, a high-pass port for 1700–2700 MHz band,
and a common port. Because HP element 1, which has a smaller
size, mainly resonates at the higher frequencies whereas HP el-
ement 2 with a larger size mainly works at lower frequencies,
the diplexer’s high-pass port and low-pass port are connected
to HP element 1 and 2, respectively, while the common port is
directly connected to the HP port of the proposed antenna by a
coaxial cable.
292 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 16, 2017

Fig. 3. Current distribution of the VP elements: (a) 0.9 GHz and (b) 2.7 GHz.

TABLE II
FINAL OPTIMAL DIMENSION VALUES (UNIT: mm)
Fig. 4. Measured and simulated return loss of the HP elements.
Dimension Value Dimension Value Dimension Value

L1 42.5 L1 1 35.8 d3 2
L2 15.8 L1 2 40.8 R1 65
L3 20.9 W1 11 R2 85
L4 9.6 W2 19.7 R3 20
L5 47.5 W3 8.9 R4 25
L6 25 W4 7.1 R5 43.4
L7 28.6 W5 20 H1 2
L8 18.5 W6 10 H2 1
L9 57.6 d1 2.3 H3 76.9
L1 0 20.6 d2 1.3 H4 117.5

Fig. 1(c) presents the side view of the proposed antenna. It

can be seen that the VP element is mounted between the two
HP elements and fixed at the top plane of HP element 2 by three
dielectric cylinders. The proposed VP element is composed
of three radiation patches with an external profile of a discone
shape. Since the electric currents mainly distribute along the
edges of the radiators, the VP element works similarly to a
discone antenna. As plotted in Fig. 3, each radiation patch of the
VP element consists of a polygonal radiation patch and an addi-
tional radiation branch, which forms a dual-resonant structure.
Thus, dual operation bands are realized for the VP element to
support 806–960 and 1710–2690 MHz bands, which cover the
most widely used commercial communication service bands.
Therefore, the overall height of the VP element is designed
to be close to a quarter-wavelength of approximately 0.9 GHz,
while the total length of the additional radiation branch is set
to be a quarter-wavelength of about 2.7 GHz. The simulated
surface current distributions are given in Fig. 3 to better ex-
plain the radiation mechanism for the VP antenna. It is obvious
that at 0.9 GHz, the surface current density is maximum along
the edge of the polygonal radiation patch, whereas the elec-
tric currents are mainly distributed on the additional radiation
branch at 2.7 GHz.
Moreover, this simplified structure could lower the antenna’s
fabrication cost. The VP element is fed by a 50-Ω coaxial cable.
The inner conductor of the cable is joined to the VP element,
while the outer is connected to a metal disk under the VP ele-
ment. It is worth mentioning that the metal disk together with the
truncated ground plane of HP element 2 form the ground plane
of the VP element, which also realizes a compact structure.
By using HFSS software, the dimensions of the configurations
are simulated and optimized, and the final optimal dimension
values are listed in Table II.
Fig. 5. Return loss of the VP element and isolation between the HP and VP
ports.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A prototype of the proposed multiband dual-polarized omni-
directional distributed antenna is fabricated and studied theoret-
ically and experimentally.
Fig. 4 describes the measured and simulated return loss
against frequency of the HP elements. It can be found from the
simulated results that the resonant mode excited at higher band
is generated by HP element 1, while the resonant mode excited at
lower band is generated by HP element 2. The simulated return
loss for HP element 1 without parasitical strips is also presented.
By comparing the results with and without parasitical strips, the
parasitical strips’ effect on bandwidth improvement is observed.
By using a commercial diplexer, the two elements are com-
bined and form the HP part of the proposed antenna. Measured
results show that the operating bands of 690 MHz–1.03 GHz
and 1.69–3.21 GHz are obtained for HP.
Fig. 5 illustrates the return loss variation of the VP element
and the simulated and measured isolation between the HP and
VP ports. The operating bands of 770–980 MHz and 1.70–3.75
GHz are achieved for VP.
Furthermore, the isolation between HP and VP ports is also
studied. Because the HP element 2 and VP element are close
in physical configuration and HP element 2’s truncated ground
plane is also employed as part of the VP element’s ground,
the isolation between the HP element 2 and the VP element is
GUO et al.: MULTIBAND DUAL-POLARIZED OMNIDIRECTIONAL ANTENNA FOR INDOOR WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Fig. 6. Measured radiation patterns for the proposed antenna: (a) VP element
and (b) HP elements.
Fig. 7. Measured gains and photograph of the proposed antenna.
smaller. Therefore, good port isolation of larger than 25 dB at
1.69–3.75 GHz and 14 dB at 690–1.03 GHz are obtained.
The measured radiation patterns of the proposed multiband
dual-polarized antenna are plotted in Fig. 6. Omnidirectional
patterns for both VP and HP in the H-plane (xy-plane) are
achieved. The ripples of the radiation patterns for VP and HP in
293
the azimuth plane are no more than 2 dB. It can be found that the
radiation patterns of the HP elements at lower frequency band
are almost omnidirectional in the E-plane (yz-plane). This result
is caused by the effect of the HP element 2’s truncated ground
plane. Low cross-polarization levels of less than –15 dB in the
H-plane are also achieved.
The realized gain variation with frequency and the photograph
of the manufactured antenna is shown in Fig. 7. At the lower
frequency bands, the gain varies from 3.4 to 4.6 dBi for HP,
while from 2.7 to 3.4 dBi for VP. Furthermore, the antenna
gains ranging from 2.9 to 4.4 dBi for HP and 2.7 to 5.2 dBi for
VP at higher working bands are also presented.
IV. CONCLUSION
A multiband dual-polarized omnidirectional antenna is stud-
ied theoretically and experimentally in this letter. By employ-
ing a simplified discone antenna for VP, two printed circular
dipole arrays for HP and a diplexer to combine the two dipole
arrays, and a compact distributed antenna is obtained. Simu-
lated and measured results show that the operation bands of
690 MHz–1.03 GHz and 1.69–3.21 GHz for HP as well as
770–980 MHz and 1.70–3.75 GHz for VP are obtained. Stable
and omnidirectional radiation patterns for both HP and VP, low
cross-polarization level, and antenna gains ranging from 2.9 to
4.6 dBi for HP and 2.7 to 5.2 dBi for VP are achieved over
the whole operating frequencies. With such good performances,
the proposed antenna can be widely used for indoor MIMO
communication systems.
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