A Balun Bandpass Filter to Facilitate the Design of Dual-Polarized Dipole Antenna

A dipole antenna based on a balun bandpass filter (BPF) is developed in this paper. The balun BPF employs two U-shaped resonators settled on the left side of the open-circuited transmission line and two L-shaped stubs to produce signals with equal amplitude and inverse phase. In this way, the volume of the balun BPF is reduced by half, and the distance between two output ports is dramatically decreased. Then, the balun BPF is integrated with a dipole. Instead of the traditional Γ-shaped line with a wide balun ground, two thin microstrip lines with width of 1 mm are adopted to connect the dipole and the balun BPF. The antenna bandwidth is further extended due to the fusion of the resonance of the dipole and balun BPF. As a result, the proposed antenna can operate from 4350 to 5025 MHz (covering the n79 band of 5G NR, 4400 MHz–5000 MHz), yielding a good filtering performance in the stopband. The measured half-power beamwidth is ranging from 61° to 63° and the measured gain is ranging from 7.95 to 8.5 dBi in the passband. This new balun BPF and the dual-polarized dipole based on it have great potential to be applied in 5G MIMO systems.