A Dual Circularly Polarized Waveguide Antenna With Bidirectional Radiations of the Same Sense

Abstract

A dual circularly polarized waveguide antenna with bidirectional radiations of the same sense is proposed in this communication. Bidirectional circular polarization (Bi-CP) of the same sense was obtained by two identical rectangular metal slices installed on one lateral side of the waveguide with an intersection angle of 45 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> . These two metal slices were horizontally perpendicular to each other and vertically spaced by a quarter guided wavelength. A rat-race coupler was employed to excite the two metal slices with the same amplitude, but with a 0 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> or 180 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> phase difference depending on the selection of two inputs. One sense of Bi-CP was realized when the two metal slices were fed in phase and the opposite sense of Bi-CP could be obtained when they were fed out of phase. A prototype for 2.4-GHz WLAN application was tested to verify our design. The measured common bandwidth for 10-dB return loss and 3-dB axial ratio at the two feed ports was 230 MHz (9.6%, 2.29-2.52 GHz) and 210 MHz (8.6%, 2.35-2.56 GHz), respectively. The measured isolation between the two feed ports was better than 30 dB over the whole operating band.