Design of a slotted bowtie dual-polarized antenna for Sub-6 GHz multi-service wireless applications

The manuscript presents the design and experimental validation of a dual-band, dual-polarized slotted bowtie antenna for sub-6 GHz wireless applications. The proposed antenna utilizes a 2-stage work approach, where stage-1 features a trapezoidal slot-engineered bowtie radiators arranged orthogonally on a FR4 substrate and excited through a balanced feeding configuration, along with a 100 mm × 100 mm finite metallic reflector placed at an optimized distance of 28.4 mm in stage-2, facilitating reflector-assisted dual-band operation with improved radiation performance. The proposed antenna operates at frequencies of 2.52 GHz and 4.42 GHz, with measured impedance bandwidths of approximately 220 MHz and 420 MHz, respectively. The proposed antenna achieves high port isolation levels of 40 dB and 33.5 dB, with isolation surpassing 30 dB throughout the operational bands. The design sustains cross-polarization levels beneath - 15.8 dB and a front-to-back ratio exceeding 23 dB. The incorporation of the reflector significantly enhances the antenna gain from an average of 2 dBi to 7.14 dBi, with a peak measured gain of 7.6 dBi and 6.63 dBi at the two operating frequencies. The observations show that the proposed antenna is appropriate for sub-6 GHz multi-service wireless systems since it offers a compact and efficient solution for dual-band, dual-polarized operation with high isolation and gain, along with enhanced radiation characteristics.