Broadband Circularly Polarised Cross-Patch-Loaded Square Slot Antenna

Broadband circularly polarised cross- resonant frequency can be roughly estimated from
patch-loaded square slot antenna pffiffiffiffiffiffiffipffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi2

f ¼ c=2 eeff ð1=LÞ
C.C. Chou, K.H. Lin and H.L. Su where c is the speed of light in air. For the proposed design, two
orthogonal resonant modes for CP radiation can be excited by choosing
A new design of a circularly polarised square slot antenna loaded with the suitable cross patch dimensions of ‘1,w1,‘2,w2. A characteristic
a cross patch is presented. A cross patch inclined diagonally with impedance of 50 O CPW with a protruded signal strip is used to feed
respect to the square slot is placed at the centre of the square slot. By the antenna. The 50 O CPW has a signal strip of width Wf ¼ 6.4 mm
choosing proper dimensions of the cross patch, two orthogonal and a gap of spacing g ¼ 0.5 mm between the signal strip and the
resonant modes with a 90 phase difference for circular polarisation
can be excited and feed the square slot antenna using a 50 O CPW
coplanar ground plane. At the position with a notched length of
with a protruded signal strip. 10 dB return loss bandwidth of 846 MHz ‘n ¼ 9.7 mm from the slot edge, the signal strip of the CPW is narrowed
(39.6%) and 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 240 MHz (12.4%) for the to a width of Wf ¼ 1 mm, and protruded into the square slot. The
proposed antenna are achieved. Gain variation within the CP band- section of the protruded signal strip in the square slot has a length of
width is observed to be less than 1 dB. ‘t ¼ 15 mm. Note that the configuration of the proposed design in Fig. 1
gives left-hand CP (LHCP) radiation. When the cross patch is inclined
Introduction: Circularly polarised (CP) antennas are now receiving with respect to the x-axis at an angle of 45 shown in Fig. 1, right-
much attention owing to their importance in wireless communica- hand CP radiation can be obtained.
tions, radar, RFID and sensor systems. For generating CP radiation
using single feed, many microstrip antenna designs have been
proposed [1–3]. However, the obtained CP bandwidth (3 dB axial
ratio bandwidth) for related designs are narrow and less than 3%. On
the other hand, some CP antennas using a wide slot have wider CP
bandwidth than single-feed circularly polarised microstrip antennas
since printed slot antennas have relatively wider bandwidth, especially
with a wide slot. In fact, most of the CP wide slot antennas are
designed using microstripline feed, e.g. [4, 5], so circularly polarised
wide slot antennas using CPW feed are relatively few in the literature.
Advantages of CPW feed are wide bandwidth, a single metallic layer
only, small mutual coupling between two adjust lines, and easy
integration with solid state active devices. Therefore, we present a
design of a CPW-fed CP square slot antenna with cross-patch-loaded.
A cross-patch-loaded is embedded in the square slot centre to excite
two orthogonal resonant modes with equal amplitude and 90 phase
difference for CP radiation. CP operation can be achieved by properly
designing the lengths of the cross patch. The advantages of the
Fig. 2 Measured and simulated return loss of proposed antenna
proposed antenna are wide input impedance and axial ratio bandwidth
of 38 and 12% with a wide square slot and CPW-fed, respectively.
Fig. 3 Measured axial ratio and antenna gain against frequency for
proposed antenna
Results: The prototype of the proposed circularly polarised cross-

patch-loaded square slot antenna with optimal geometrical parameters
as shown in Fig. 1 was constructed and measured. The proposed
antenna was calculated using Ansoft HFSS and the measured results
Fig. 1 Geometry of proposed antenna obtained with an Agilent 8714ET network analyser. Fig. 2 shows
measured and simulated frequency responses of return loss compar-
ison for the proposed antenna. Good impedance matching of
Antenna design: Fig. 1 shows the geometrical configuration of the CP measured and simulated return loss can be obtained, and the measured
cross-patch-load square slot antenna. The square slot of side length L impedance bandwidth (10 dB return loss) is as large as 846 MHz
is etched on an FR-4 grounded substrate (G G ¼ 70 70 mm2) of (1604–2450 MHz) or about 39.6% with respect to the centre
thickness H ¼ 1.6 mm and relative dielectric permittivity of er ¼ 4.4. frequency at 2137 MHz. The measured axial ratio in the broadside
The loading cross patch of dimensions ‘1 w ¼ 40 5 mm2 and direction is presented in Fig. 3. The experimental results show the CP
‘2 w2 ¼ 15 4 mm2, respectively, is embedded in the slot centre. bandwidth of the proposed antenna reaches 240 MHz (1840–
The cross patch is inclined with respect to the x-axis at an angle of 2080 MHz) or about 12.4% with respect to the designed centre
45 . The cross-patch-loaded of unequal arm lengths makes the frequency at 1940 MHz, at which the measured axial ratio is at
fundamental resonant mode (TM01) of the square slot antenna split about a minimum value. The spinning linear radiation patterns of
to two near-degenerate orthogonal modes for CP operation, and the the proposed antenna in two principal planes measured at 1940 MHz
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 26th April 2007 Vol. 43 No. 9

are plotted in Fig. 4. In the broadside direction, good LHCP radiation Conclusions: A circularly polarised cross-patch-loaded square slot
is obtained. It is also observed in Fig. 3 that, within the 3 dB axial antenna is proposed and implemented. The proposed antenna uses a
ratio bandwidth, the antenna gain variations are less than 1 dB, with simple cross patch as the perturbation element for the excitation of
peak antenna gain of about 3.5 dBi. Note that a print slot antenna is a two orthogonal resonant modes for CP radiation. In addition, experi-
bidirectional radiator and the radiation patterns in both sides (z-axis) mental results show that the present proposed antenna has impedance
of the antenna are about the same. bandwidth of about 846 MHz or 39.6% and a 3 dB CP bandwidth of
about 240 MHz or 12.4%, which are greater than those obtained for
related designs [1–3].
# The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2007

14 March 2007
Electronics Letters online no: 20070189
doi: 10.1049/el:20070189
C.C. Chou, K.H. Lin and H.L. Su (National Sun Yat-Sen University,
Electrical Engineering, 70 Lien-hai Road, Kaohsiung, Taiwan,
Republic of China)
References
1 Iwasaki, H.: ‘A circularly polarized small-size microstrip antenna with a
cross slot’, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 1996, 44, pp. 1399–1401
2 Wong, K.L., and Lin, Y.F.: ‘Circularly polarised microstrip antenna with
tuning stub’, Electron. Lett., 1998, 34, pp. 831–832
3 Lu, J.H., Tang, C.L., and Wong, K.L.: ‘Circular polarisation design of
single feed equilateral triangular microstrip antenna’, Electron. Lett.,
1998, 34, pp. 319–321
4 Wong, K.L., Wu, J.Y., and Wu, C.K.: ‘A circularly polarized patch-loaded
square slot antenna’, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., 1999, 23, pp. 363–365
5 Chuo, F.P., Han, T.Y., and Chen, T.R.: ‘Compact slot-coupled microstrip
antennas with circular polarization’, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., 2005,
47, pp. 57–59
Fig. 4 Measured radiation patterns of proposed antenna at 1960 MHz
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 26th April 2007 Vol. 43 No. 9

Broadband Circularly Polarised Cross-Patch-Loaded Square Slot Antenna

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Broadband circularly polarised cross- resonant frequency can be roughly estimated from

patch-loaded square slot antenna pffiffiffiffiffiffiffipffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi2

Results: The prototype of the proposed circularly polarised cross-

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 26th April 2007 Vol. 43 No. 9

# The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2007

Fig. 4 Measured radiation patterns of proposed antenna at 1960 MHz

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 26th April 2007 Vol. 43 No. 9

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