High performance circularly polarized microstrip antenna

摘要

A microstrip antenna for radiating circularly polarized electromagnetic waves comprising a cluster array (20) of at least four microstrip radiator elements (22a-22d), each of which is provided with dual orthogonal coplanar feeds in phase quadrature relation achieved by connection to an asymmetric T-junction power divider (30) impedance notched at resonance. The dual fed circularly polarized reference element is positioned with its axis at a 45° angle with respect to the unit cell axis. The other three dual fed elements in the unit cell are positioned and fed with a coplanar feed structure with sequential rotation and phasing to enhance the axial ratio and impedance matching performance over a wide bandwidth. The centers of the radiator elements are disposed at the corners of a square with each side of a length d in the range of 0.7 to 0.9 times the free space wavelength of the antenna radiation and the radiator elements reside in a square unit cell area of sides equal to 2d and thereby permit the array to be used as a phased array antenna for electronic scanning and is realizable in a high temperature superconducting thin film material for high efficiency.