A Circularly Polarized Stacked Electromagnetically Coupled Patch Antenna

Abstract

In this communication, we present a high-performance circularly polarized (CP) stacked electromagnetically coupled patch antenna and its subarray at X band. In addition to low boresight axial-ratios, the subarray has measured 10-dB impedance and 3-dB axial-ratio bandwidths of 25.6% and 23.5% respectively as compared to the measured 20.2% and 8.0% for a single element. The mutual coupling for this element is shown to be lower than other reported stacked patch antennas and obtained a gain (>10 dbic) bandwidth of 23.5%. The calculated antenna efficiency is 89% around center frequency for the single element whereas the subarray has an overall efficiency of >71% (-1.5 dB) over 21% bandwidth.