Rashid, Zainol Abidin Abdul;Islam, Mohammad Tariqul;Jiunn, Ng Kok
41
A compact and broadband $4{\times}1$ array antenna was developed for 3G smart antenna system testbed. The $4{\times}1$ uniform linear array antenna was designed to operate at 1.885 to 2.2GHz with a total bandwidth of 315MHz. The array elements were based on the novel broadband L-probe fed inverted hybrid E-H (LIEH) shaped microstrip patch, which offers 22% size reduction to the conventional rectangular microstrip patch antenna. For steering the antenna beam, a commercial variable attenuator (KAT1D04SA002), a variable phase shifter (KPH350SC00) with four units each, and the corporate 4-ways Wilkinson power divider which was fabricated in-house were integrated to form the beamforming feed network. The developed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 17.32% ($VSWR{\leq}1.5$), 21.78% ($VSWR{\leq}2$) with respect to center frequency 2.02GHz and with an achievable gain of 11.9dBi. The design antenna offer a broadband, compact and mobile solution for a 3G smart antenna testbed to fully characterized the IMT-2000 radio specifications and system performances.