Bidirectional rod antennas comprising a narrow patch and parasitic elements

This paper proposes a novel bi-directional rod antenna comprising a narrow patch and parasitic elements for base station antennas of street microcell systems. It is shown that the parasitic elements improve the antenna effici ency of an ordinary bidirectional printed antenna and make it possible to f orm the antennas using conventional substrates. This paper also proposes a suitable configuration for the array and investigates radiation characteris tics of the configuration. Finally, a prototype of the bi-directional rod a ntenna is presented and the effectiveness of the bi-directional antenna is evaluated.