A broadband dual-polarization base station antenna element with a coupling feed

This paper presents a broadband, dual-polarized base station antenna element by reasonably designing two orthogonal symmetrical dipole, four loading cylinders, balun, feed patches, specific shape reflector and plastic fasteners. Coupling feed is adopted to avoid the direct connection between the feed cables and the dipoles. The antenna element matches well in the frequency range of 1.7-2.7 GHz and the return loss (RL) S11<;-15 dB and the isolation S21<; -30 dB. Low cross-polarization, high front-back ratio (>25dB) and stable half-power beam width (HPBW) with 65±5° are also achieved. The proposed antenna element covers the whole long term evolution (LTE) band and is backward compatible with 3G and 2G bands.