volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

Optically transparent antennas have attracted increasing interest in recent years. However, the inherent ohmic loss of transparent conductor used in antennas will always introduce degradation of radiation efficiency. It is of most importance to find the optimization between the material loss and radiation efficiency. In this paper, we design and experimentally demonstrate a high-performance optically transparent dual-polarized cross dipole antenna over 3.4-3.8 GHz for 5G wireless communication based on the characteristic analysis of surface current distribution. By making current distribution uniform on the radiators and reducing the current on the ground, the mutual coupling between the elements is alleviated, and the radiation efficiency can be optimized. The proposed antenna is fabricated with 0.118-Ohm/sq meshed metal, and the optical transparency of antenna is 81%. The proposed antenna achieves a voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of less than 1.3, radiation efficiency of 72% (84% of pure copper) and a peak gain of 4.5 dBi (5.1 dBi of pure copper). Compared to current state-of-arts, the proposed antenna exhibits better performance of the figure of merit (FOM) in terms of the bandwidth, optical transparency and radiation efficiency. Our work paves the way to diverse application of beyond-5G wireless communication.

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Dr. Haowei Xi

Dr. Xiao-Liang Ge

Professor Kuiwen Xu

Dr. Jianhua Shen

Dr. Xianglong Liu

Dr. Xu Su