Broadband Filtering Magnetoelectronic Dipole Antenna With Quasi-Elliptic Gain Response

A filtering magnetoelectronic dipole antenna (MEDA) with quasi-elliptic gain response and wide operating band is investigated. Different from the conventional MEDA, the antenna studied here is fed by fork-shaped microstrip line aperture-coupled excitation. The intrinsic radiation null of the MEDA at the lower passband edge is utilized, and a mathematical model is first put forward to demonstrate its working mechanism. Four driven stubs connected to the shorted walls of MEDA are used to excite the planar dipole arms. The parasitic inductor and the coupling capacitor introduced by driven stubs form an equivalent low-pass filter network, leading to a radiation null at higher frequency. Furthermore, a third radiation null is generated by introducing two quarter-wavelength U-shaped shorted stubs to improve the out-of-band suppression. Besides, due to the introduction of multiple coupling structure, including the fork-shaped microstrip line coupling slot and driven stubs, a wide operating band can be realized while maintaining a low profile of 0.15 wavelength. The experimental results show that an impedance bandwidth of 53.5% (2.95-5.1 GHz) is achieved and an out-of-band suppression level higher than 17.9 dB is obtained. What is more, an average gain of 8 dBi and good radiation patterns are realized over the whole operating band.