Characteristic Mode Design of Wide Band Circularly Polarized Patch Antenna Consisting of H-Shaped Unit Cells

Abstract

This paper proposes a general characteristic mode-based design procedure of simple three steps for wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna design. First of all, the characteristic mode analysis is carried out to understand the different modes of a proposed antenna geometry without feeding network. Second, modal currents and their corresponding modal fields (radiation patterns) are studied for choosing modes to shape the required radiation pattern. Finally, a suitable feeding structure is chosen to excite the desired modes at the same time owns a good impedance matching. As an example, a CP patch antenna fed with cross-shaped aperture is proposed and designed following the design procedure. Patch consisting of H-shaped unit cells is used as the radiator. Characteristic mode method is applied to analyze the modes of the proposed antenna and explains the property of wide band circular polarization. It is revealed that higher order modes of the patch can be used to achieve circular polarization over a wideband of frequency. The antenna is fabricated using printed circuit techniques. The return loss and radiation properties are measured and compared with simulation results. With the highly coupled units, a wide impedance bandwidth of 38.8% is obtained. Besides, a wide 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth of 14.3% is achieved.