Wideband Widebeam Dual Circularly Polarized Magnetoelectric Dipole Antenna/Array With Meta-Columns Loading for 5G and Beyond

A dual circularly polarized (CP) magnetoelectric dipole antenna is presented in this article. The dual-CP antenna was devised to form a circular ring shape and fabricated using 3-D printing technology. To overcome the conflict between high (broadside) gain and wide (half-power) beamwidth, a new beamwidth broadening technique was proposed. Twelve metacolumns were placed evenly along the circumference close to the ring-shaped dipole. A design approach is elaborated, where the number and size of meta-columns were decided according to the design curves. Symmetrical beamwidth of 108° in orthogonal planes with a broadside gain of 6 dBic was achieved across a wide effective bandwidth from 3.2 to 5.4 GHz (51%), sufficiently covering the 5G new radio (NR) bands: n77, n78, n79. The antenna owns a compact size of 0.83×0.83×0.18 λ
³
at 4.15 GHz. A planar subarray composed of four dual-CP elements was also investigated and compared with the existing arrays.