Broadband unidirectional dipole antennas for wireless applications

Many wideband antennas have been developed over the years in order to meet such as UWB and radar applications. In this paper, we first have compared a number of broadband dipole antennas. Based on the knowledge gained, a new broadband dipole antenna on top of a conducting ground plane (a reflector) is then proposed and investigated with the aid of a commercial electromagnetic simulation package. The antenna is optimized by changing the dipole shape, diameter, feed gap and the spacing between the antenna and the ground plane. It is shown that the optimized antenna has a very broad bandwidth (from 2.8 to at least 12 GHz) with the ability to produce unidirectional radiation pattern and may be used to form a wideband dual-polarized antenna array for applications such as the wireless power transmission and collection.