This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2684538, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. XX, NO. XX, OCTOBER 2016
A Dual-Linear Polarized Highly Isolated Crossed
Dipole Antenna for MPAR Application
Mirhamed Mirmozafari, Student Member, IEEE, Guifu Zhang, Senior Member, IEEE,
Shahrokh Saeedi, Member, IEEE, and Richard J. Doviak, Life Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—The design of a dual polarization antenna with
high isolation between ports has always been a challenge in the
antenna community. To overcome this issue, a pair of printed
collocated bent dipoles with a unique excitation method, is
introduced in this paper. A balun and parallel transmission
line are concurrently designed for Multi-function Phased Array
Radar (MPAR) in the frequency bandwidth of 2.7-3 GHz. To
maximize the polarization purity of the antenna and eliminate the
parasitic radiation of the balun, the radiating element is isolated
from the balun by a set of ground planes. A better than 10-dB
return loss, and a measured port-to-port isolation of 52 dB, over
the whole bandwidth are achieved. The cross-polarization pattern
remains 40 dB below the co-polarization peak in the principal
planes. Having a compact geometry, the proposed antenna can
readily be extended to form an array.
Index Terms—Cross-polarization, dipole antennas, dual polar-
ization, isolation, MPAR.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T O accommodate weather observation and air surveillance
requirements concurrently, the Multi-function Phased
Array Radar (MPAR) is proposed [1]. Since each function
demands some criteria, radar components are being upgraded
to meet precise requirements, such as matched co-polarization
patterns, highly isolated dual-polarization and low cross-
polarization level over the entire frequency bandwidth.
Dual linear-polarized antennas, as an appropriate solution
to meet the aforementioned requirements, were introduced
and are undergoing significant developments. An overview
of reported dual polarized antennas, categorized into three
major groups, is provided in [2]. Microstrip patch antennas,
owing to their low profile and ease of fabrication, make up a
large percentage of proposed dual polarized antennas and are
thoroughly discussed in [3]. Based on their feeding techniques
they can be categorized into different types [3]: microstrip-
fed, probe-fed, and aperture-coupled antennas. The highest
isolation reported in microstrip-fed and probe-fed antennas
is 30 dB [3]. Feedline parasitic interference and stimulation
of higher-order modes, degrade the polarization purity in
microstrip-fed and probe-fed antennas, respectively [4], [5].
Utilizing aperture-coupled patch antennas, some antenna fea-
This work was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration under Grant NA11OAR4320072.
M. Mirmozafari and S. Saeedi are with the Advanced Radar Research Cen-
ter (ARRC) and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University
of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA (e-mail: m.mirmozafari@ou.edu).
G. Zhang is with the School of Meteorology, School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, and the Advanced Radar Research Center, University
of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
R. J. Doviak is with the National Severe Storms Laboratory, National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Norman, OK 73072, USA.
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1
Saa
Parallel
Line
Sab
Balun
Sbb
Fig. 1. Fundamental idea of proposed crossed dipole antenna. Saa , Sbb , and
Sab are coupling components between different parts of the two antennas.
tures including gain, simplicity, and low back lobe radiation
are sacrificed to achieve high level of isolation [6]. Various
aperture configurations were suggested in [3], and up to
35 dB port-to-port isolation was reported. To further enhance
isolation and cross-polarization levels, differential feed method
is widely studied [7]. However, the implementation of two
differential feeds in a single layer is challenging and it often
results in gain loss, larger antenna area or bulky multilayer
structures.
Similar orthogonal structures, such as cross dipoles and
cross slots, forms another category [2]. A non-planar cross
dipole in [8] achieved 34 dB port-to-port isolation. Due to high
sensitivity to fabrication tolerances and lack of balun feed to
provide equal differntial signals, the antenna cross-polarization
is severely degraded. In contrast, an easy-to-fabricate printed
dipole with 35 dB port isolation is provided in [9]. However,
it suffers from collocation of co- and cross-polarization peaks
in the radiation pattern.
To satisfy the MPAR requirements with a single antenna,
a printed crossed bent dipoles excited by a unique feeding
technique is presented in this letter. Stripline feeding along
with symmetrical and identical radiative elements result in
high level of port isolation. Additionally, a set of ground
planes isolate the radiative element from the balun. This tech-
nique decreases extraneous radiation from the balun and low
cross-polarization level is achieved. Due to identical radiating
structures, similar co-polarization patterns are achieved which
is an appropriate feature for weather applications. Finally, as
a demonstration, a prototype is fabricated using inexpensive
PCB technology.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2684538, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. XX, NO. XX, OCTOBER 2016 2

Board # 2 Board # 1 TABLE I

Wg
D ETAILED D IMENSIONS OF THE FABRICATED ANTENNA ( UNIT:mm)
W Ws Ψ
Parameters L W LG Ws Hs Lg L1
Hs L
Values 20 3 300 55 32 10.45 16
Wb
L2 Parameters Wg Lsg Wsg We Wb Sv L2
L1
Sv
Values 3.05 40 20 2 0.35 7 22.3
We

Lsg
Lg
LG

Wsg of isolation, the major contributors to the coupling between

Principal
ground plane
Fig. 2. Geometry of proposed antenna. Principal ground plane has been split
to display the baluns. A quarter of cross slot is shown in split ground plane.
II. T HEORY AND D ESIGN
Fig.1 presents the fundamental idea of the proposed antenna.
For each polarization, a dipole is connected to a parallel
transmission line and is placed a quarter wavelength above
the ground plane. Below the ground plane, there is a balun
with two branches, extending 180◦ out of phase from each
other, providing a balanced differential port. The parallel
transmission lines are attached to differential ports through a
cross-shaped slot cut in the ground plane. To have collocated
orthogonal dipoles without intersection, two baluns with dif-
ferent lengths are considered.
The implementation of the fundamental idea is illustrated in
Fig. 2. For each polarization, a bent dipole is placed between
two substrates of 0.06 inch thickness. To interlock collocated
dipoles a couple of short and long gaps (also see Fig. 5a),
are cut into boards #1 and #2, respectively. Cutting the gaps
into two boards leave two slits with different lengths on the
sub-ground planes. Although two boards look a little different,
after collocation both dipoles experience identical environment
(Fig. 5a). The final dimensions of the antenna, implemented
using Rogers RO 4003 (εr = 3.55), are provided in Table I.
To illustrate how the proposed antenna can achieve high level
the antennas are provided in Fig. 1. They are denoted by Saa ,
Sbb , and Sab and defined as follows:
- Saa : the coupling between antennas,
- Sbb : the coupling between baluns,
- Sab and Sba : the coupling between balun #2 and antenna #1
and vice versa.
Decreasing each of these three components enhances the port-
to-port isolation (S12 ). To implement each of the baluns, the
stripline structure is employed. As shown in Fig. 2, in the
stripline structure, the balun is sandwiched between two sub-
ground planes. This way, each of the baluns between its sub-
ground planes is isolated from the other balun and so, Sbb
is significantly reduced. Additionally, the baluns are designed
below the principal ground plane and the interaction between
them and the antennas (Sab and Sba ) are reduced. Furthermore,
the stripline sub-ground planes block the extraneous radiations
of the baluns, which leads to lower cross-polarization level. Fi-
nally, Saa is reduced owing to symmetrical collocated dipoles
and parallel lines. That is, whatever effect the antenna #1 (#2)
has on one pole of the antenna #2 (#1), it has on the other
pole of the antenna #2 (#1) as well. Therefore, the potential
difference at the end of the parallel line is equal to zero. To
elaborate the symmetry effect, the current distributions on the
excited and terminated dipoles are depicted in Figs. 3a and 3b,
respectively. While the excited dipole is carrying two currents
in the same direction, the terminated one has currents traveling
in the opposite directions. Neither this mode can effectively
propagate, nor make a phase difference at the end of parallel
line. It is worth noting that the current scale on the excited
dipole is a thousandfold greater than that of the terminated one.
Thus, the currents with the same direction on the parallel line
of the terminated dipole can not effectively contribute to cross-
polarization radiation. As such, the dipoles remain independent
in terms of both port isolation and radiation pattern.

Jsurf [A/m] Jsurf [A/m]

5.000E+001 5.000E-002

4.002E+001 4.002E-002

3.004E+001 3.004E-002

2.006E+001 2.006E-002

1.008E+001 1.008E-002

1.000E-001 1.000E-004

(a) (b) (a) (b)

Fig. 3. Current distribution on crossed dipoles. (a) Excited dipole. (b) Fig. 4. Input impedance of the antenna with dipole dimensions. (a) Variation
Terminated dipole. in antenna length (W=3 mm), (b) Variation in antenna width (L=20 mm).

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2684538, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. XX, NO. XX, OCTOBER 2016 3

III. S IMULATION AND M EASUREMENT R ESULTS

Having a group of key parameters, the proposed antenna
shows versatility to match various frequency range with de-
sired bandwidth. Among them, the length (L) of the dipole,
its width (W), and its bent angle (Ψ) play the dominant roles.
Figs. 4a and 4b depict the parametric study on length and
width of dipoles, respectively. While the length of dipole
determines the center resonance frequency, the bandwidth
is mainly affected by the width of the dipole. It has been
demonstrated that a bent dipole with a bend angle of 30◦
shows the minimum off-boresight gain loss [10]. Because the
proposed antenna is eventually intended to function as an
element in a scanning array, the dipole bent angle is fixed
at 30◦ to achieve minimum loss in scanning.
To verify the simulation, the antenna in Fig. 5 was fabricated
at Radar Innovations Laboratory, the University of Oklahoma.
The dipole, parallel line, and balun are all designed in a
single metal layer, making it possible to fabricate them simul-
taneously. It precludes any additional soldering process and
consequently, eliminates extra assembling loss. Each dipole
along with corresponding balun and parallel line were milled
simultaneously on the bottom layer of the top substrate using
a LPKF ProtoMat S103 (subset of Fig. 5b). The two stripline
sub-ground planes are milled on the top layer of the top
substrate and bottom layer of the bottom substrate. The two
boards are bonded together using Rogers RO4450B prepreg.
Vias were drilled and electroplated to keep the two ground
planes at the same potential. A small section of PCB was
removed to ease soldering the SMA connector. The antenna
assembly was mounted on a fairly large 300 mm × 300 mm
copper ground plane to decrease the edge effects.
The S-parameters of the fabricated antenna was measured
using a N5225A network analyzer from Agilent Technologies,
calibrated using an E-Cal module. Fig. 6 provides simulation
Fig. 6. Simulated and measured S-parameters of the antenna.
and measured S-parameters of the antenna. Both ports are
matched to better than 15 dB in the entire frequency range.
While measured S11 almost coincides with its simulation
counterpart, S22 experiences a slight shift of center resonance
frequency, which can be attributed to fabrication tolerances.
It is worth noting that, the most critical dimension of the
proposed antenna is the width of the baluns (0.35 mm). Any
discrepancy between the widths of two branches of the balun,
will cause a frequency resonance shift and also will result
in unequal power split between two poles of the dipole. This
condition impairs the symmetry, the isolation between dipoles,
and the polarization purity. This is the main reason for the
discrepancy between the measured and simulated S21 in Fig. 6.
Nevertheless, the port-to-port isolation remains better than
52 dB over the entire bandwidth.
The antenna pattern was measured in the far field anechoic
chamber at the Advanced Radar Research Center of the
University of Oklahoma, and the measurement set-up is shown
in Fig. 7. A fairly high stand of Rohacell 31HF foam from
EVONIK Industries, with a dielectric constant of 1.05 is
fabricated and mounted over the pedestal to emulate the simu-
lation environment. To suppress any parasitic interference, the
feeding cable is covered by absorbers as shown in Fig. 7a. The
orthogonal element is terminated in a 50 Ω load. Following
meticulous measurement considerations, we achieved -50 dB
boresight cross polarization level at the center frequency and
better than -40 dB over entire angle in principal planes.
The measured and simulated radiation patterns are illus-
trated in Fig. 8. While the lowest cross-polarization occurs at

(a)

Top Sub-Ground
Top Substrate
Antenna & Balun
Bottom Substrate
Bottom Sub-Ground

(b) (c)
Fig. 5. Prototype of the proposed antenna. (a) Side view of individual boards (a) (b)
and collocated crossed dipole without ground plane. (b) Top view with subset
showing the antenna stack-up. (c) Bottom view. Fig. 7. Pattern measurement set-up. (a) Side view. (b) Front view.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2684538, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. XX, NO. XX, OCTOBER 2016
(a)
(b)
Fig. 8. Measured and simulated radiation patterns of the proposed antenna
at principal planes. (a) E-plane, (b) H-plane.
the center frequency, it rises at the beginning and the end
of the frequency bandwidth, which matches the simulation
results. This is because of the phase imbalance of the balun
which is optimized at the center frequency of 2.85 GHz and
increases monotonically up to ±9◦ toward the beginning and
the end of the frequency bandwidth. As such, the peak of co-
polarization at corresponding E-plane is shifted by ±0.5◦ and
cross-polarizations increase at these frequencies. In addition,
contrary to the simulation, the cross-polarization level at ±90◦
increases, which is attributed to the edge diffraction of the
ground plane and other measurement components at the back
of the antenna. The antenna exhibits very low simulated cross-
polarization in E-planes (below -50 dB). The discrepancy ob-
served between the simulated and measured cross-polarization
in this plane is due to the limitation of the measurement
system. Because of geometrical symmetry of the structure, the
orthogonal antenna has similar radiation characteristics.
Vaughan et al. demonstrated in [11] that a theoretical
crossed dipole could be oriented so that the envelope cor-
relation coefficient (ECC) is identically zero. However, in
practice, the ECC for a crossed dipole is subject to degradation
regarding the isolation between dipoles. The higher isolation is
achieved, the lower ECC results. To examine the independency
between two dipoles radiation patterns in the suggested design,
the simulated ECC in Ansys HFSS using far field-based
method with frequency resolution of 10 MHz and the angular
steps of 1 degree is computed using (1), and shown in Fig. 9.
4
Fig. 9. Simulated envelope correlation coefficient of the antenna.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A dual linear polarized cross dipoles for MPAR applica-
tion was presented and verified experimentally. With 52 dB
isolation, to the best knowledge of the authors, the suggested
antenna is among the most isolated antennas. The peak of
the co-polarization coincides with the null of the cross-
polarization with a difference of 50 dB, which makes it an
ideal solution for weather applications and array performance.
High isolation along with low ECC enable the antenna to
perform appropriately in MIMO applications as well. Having
a wideband balun with lower phase and amplitude imbalance,
the radiation features of the proposed antenna can be enhanced
across a wider frequency bandwidth.
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