Patent ID: 8217850

Claim:
An antenna array, comprising: a conductive ground plane; a plurality of monopoles, each comprising a generally symmetric, tapered or semi-elliptic radiating element mounted on and substantially perpendicular to the conductive ground plane; a capacitive hat positioned adjacent to the plurality of monopoles; an inductive shorting element extending from the capacitive hat to the conductive ground plane; a plurality of variable length feed lines, the plurality of variable length feed lines being connected to the plurality of radiating elements, wherein each variable length feed line is operatively connected to an associated radiating element and the plurality of variable length feed lines are configured to supply uniformly phase-fed signals to the radiating elements for causing the antenna to provide an omni-directional beam when the antenna array is in an omni-directional mode; and wherein the plurality of variable length feed lines is further configured to supply variably phase-fed signals to the radiating elements for causing the antenna to provide a directional beam when the antenna array is in a directional mode.