Cellular communication systems having antenna arrays therein that provide narrowed azimuth beamwidth with improved gain

Abstract

An antenna includes a three-column array of radiating elements having first and second L-grid sub-arrays therein that span the same rows of the array. The first sub-array has two radiating elements in a first column, and a radiating element in a second column; the second sub-array has two radiating elements in a third column, and a radiating element in the second column. A first hybrid coupler is provided, which includes: (i) a first input port responsive to a first RF feed signal, (ii) a second input port responsive to a second RF feed signal, (iii) a first output port configured to generate a first sub-array feed signal, which is provided to the first sub-array of radiating elements as a sum of k1 times the first RF feed signal and k2 times the second RF feed signal, and (iv) a second output port configured to generate a second sub-array feed signal, which is provided to the second sub-array of radiating elements as a sum of k1 times the second RF feed signal and k2 times the first RF feed signal, where k1 and k2 are positive numbers, k1>k2, k1+k2≤1, 0.85≤k1≤0.95, and 0.05≤k2≤0.15.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.