LTE-based Broadband Antenna for Vehicular Applications

Vehicle consists of antennas for various applications. Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2X) are one of the most recent applications. This new technology can significantly enhance efficiency of travel, reduce traffic incidents and improve safety. In this paper, an LTE-based broadband omnidirectional planar antenna suitable for vehicular communication is presented. The design is intended for roof mount position on vehicles for public and domestic transportations. The proposed antenna consists of four printed arc dipoles that form a circular loop for horizontal plane omnidirectional radiation. A feeding network which consists of four baluns and an impedance matching circuit is designed to excite the four arc dipoles. By introducing small defects, slots and t-shaped design on the arc dipole and feeding network, respectively, improve the impedance matching. Experimental results show that the presented broadband antenna have good omnidirectional performance over 10 dB return loss bandwidth. The proposed broadband antenna covers 1.64-2.13 GHz at -10 dB for LTE bands. A prototype antenna was fabricated and tested for input reflection coefficient. Simulated and measured results for the broadband antenna element is presented.