Quadrifilar-curl antenna for the "Big-LEO" mobile satellite service system

Abstract

The mobile satellite communications arena has received considerable attention as the next step for personal wireless communications systems. The use of satellites to provide world wide coverage will allow for many new market areas. But the additional opportunities being provided by satellite based personal communications systems has brought additional challenges. One of the new challenges facing the antenna engineers is to provide reasonably sized antennas that deliver acceptable electrical performance for the mobile terminal. This paper reports on work at UCLA to develop personal communication antennas for the big low Earth orbit (Big-LEO) satellite system mobile terminal. The radiators for this system require broad radiation patterns with good circular polarization characteristics, for the particular uplink and downlink bands of 1.61-1.6265 GHz and 2.4835-2.5 GHz respectively.