IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

13, 2014

971

Triangular Ring Antennas for Dual-Frequency

Dual-Polarization or Circular-Polarization Operations
Tao Zhang, Yan Zhang, Member, IEEE, Wei Hong, Fellow, IEEE, and Ke Wu, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractIn this letter, triangular ring (TRG) antennas are proposed for dual-frequency dual-polarization (DFDP) and circularpolarization (CP) operations. By simultaneously exciting the two
orthogonal modes of the TRG, the DFDP or CP performance is
achieved. By varying the vertex angle of the TRG, the frequency
ratio (FR) of the two orthogonal modes could be continuously tunable for the DFDP operation. By moving the FR close to 1, a CP antenna element is developed for the sequential-rotation array. Due
to the geometry advantage of the TRG, the array could be designed
to have a low sidelobe level (SLL). Measured results show that an
overlapped bandwidth (of return loss, axial ratio, and gain) of 10%
and an SLL of below 20 dB are achieved. The fabricated 120
TRG (for the DFDP operation) and the 75 TRG (for the CP operation) are 28.2% and 65.5% the size of the conventional equilateral
triangular patch antenna, respectively.
Index TermsCircular polarization, dual frequency, sequential
rotation, sidelobe level, triangular ring.

I. INTRODUCTION

NTENNAS working at two bands are attracting more

and more research attention due to the rapid development of dual-band communication systems such as wireless
local area network (WLAN), global positioning system (GPS),
and satellite communication, etc. There have been numerous
designs of dual-frequency antennas. In [1] and [2], coplanar
waveguide (CPW)-fed slot antennas are adopted for dual-band
operations with high qualities. However, these antennas have
bidirectional radiation, which will cause gain reduction. In [3]
and [4], the dual-band operations are achieved by introducing
metamaterial technology. However, the peak gains are low.
In [5][8], microstrip patches of different shapes are used.
However, rectangular-shaped and circular-shaped patches
adopted in [5][7] generally occupy larger areas than a triangular one. In [8], an equilateral triangular patch etched with
slots has been introduced for dual-band operation.
Circularly polarized (CP) antennas have attracted intensive
research interest due to their better resistance to multipath interference and polarization mismatch. In [9], the orthogonal modes
Manuscript received April 04, 2014; accepted April 20, 2014. Date of publication April 23, 2014; date of current version May 26, 2014. This work was
supported in part by the National 973 Project 2010CB327400, the NSFC under
Grant 61302019, and the NSF of Jiangsu Province under Grant BK2012323.
(Corresponding author: Tao Zhang.)
T. Zhang, Y. Zhang, and W. Hong are with the State Key Laboratory of
Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China (e-mail:
taozhang@emfield.org; yanzhang@emfield.org; weihong@seu.edu.cn).
K. Wu is with the Poly-Grames Research Center, Department of Electrical
Engineering, cole Polytechnique de Montral, Montral, QC H3C3A7, Canada
(e-mail: ke.wu@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2319455

Fig. 1. Current distribution of the two modes. (a) Horizontal mode. (b) Vertical
mode.

on a circular patch with perturbations are introduced to radiate

CP waves. In [10] and [11], the square patch is adopted for
compact CP antenna design. However, it is well known that the
area occupation of a triangular patch is smaller than the circularly/squarely shaped patches at a fixed frequency. In [12], an
equilateral triangular patch with a tuning stub is employed for
CP operations. The size is found to be 78% the size of the conventional triangular patch antenna.
Moreover, since the current path is longer with the same
area occupation, a triangular ring resonator is generally smaller
than a triangular patch at a fixed frequency. However, rare
research has employed a triangular ring into antenna designs,
and this motivates the present work. In this letter, the triangular
ring (TRG) is analyzed and adopted for dual-frequency dual-polarization (DFDP) and CP applications. Two orthogonal modes
are simultaneously excited. By varying the vertex angle from
80 to 130 , a frequency ratio (FR) of 1.1 to 1.45 is achieved
for the DFDP antenna. When the angle is 75 , the TRG works
as a CP antenna. This antenna is found to be suitable for the
sequential rotation (SR) array. Due to the geometry advantage
of the TRG, the element spacing is small while maintaining an
acceptable mutual coupling level. Thus, the array is designed
to have a low sidelobe level (SLL) of 20 dB. The measured
overlapped bandwidth (of return loss, axial ratio, and gain) of
the array is wider than 10%. The size of the fabricated TRG for
the DFDP/CP operation is
,
28.2%/65.5% that of the conventional triangular patch, where
denotes the free-space wavelength.
II. TRIANGULAR RING
The TRG is developed on a single-layer printed circuit
board (PCB). The substrate is Rogers 5880 with a thickness of
1.57 mm. The dielectric constant is 2.2, and the loss tangent is
0.0009.
Fig. 1 shows the two operating modes of the TRG: the horizontal mode at the lower frequency and vertical mode at the
higher frequency. Since the current travels along different paths,
the resonant frequencies of the two modes are different. Moreover, based on the current distributions, it could be found that the

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 4. Current distributions of the two orthogonal modes on the 75 TRG at

10.78 GHz. (a) 0 in phase. (b) 90 in phase.
Fig. 2. Simulated operating frequencies and frequency ratio versus vertex
angle thita.

Fig. 5. Geometry of the DFDP antenna:

mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm.

mm,

,
mm,

mm,

Fig. 3. Simulated cross-polarization levels versus vertex angle thita.

radiated electrical field at the boresight is along -axis/ -axis at

the lower/higher frequency.
As shown in Fig. 2, the two frequencies are found to be controllable by the vertex angle. As the vertex angle increases, the
lower frequency decreases while the higher frequency increases.
As a result, an FR of 1.02 to 1.45 is achieved.
When the two modes are simultaneously excited, a DFDP antenna or CP antenna could be achieved. For a TRG with a large
vertex angle, the two frequencies are away from each other,
and thus the interactions of the two modes are negligible. In
this case, a DFDP antenna could be developed. However, for a
TRG with a small vertex angle, the two frequencies are close,
and the cross-polarization level (CPL) at each frequency will
be high. This is mainly because at the lower frequency, apart
from the horizontal mode, the vertical mode also contributes to
the radiated waves. The situation is similar for the higher frequency. Fig. 3 illustrates the cross-polarization levels versus
vertex angle. As shown in Fig. 4, when the FR becomes even
smaller, the two modes are found to be equal in amplitude with
a phase difference of 90 at 10.78 GHz. In this case, the TRG
will radiate CP waves. Finally, as the vertex angle varies from
80 to 130 , the TRG works as a DFDP antenna. Meanwhile,
when the vertex angle is 75 , the TRG radiates high-quality CP
waves. The simulated and measured results are presented in the
following parts.
III. DUAL-FREQUENCY DUAL-POLARIZATION ANTENNA
Fig. 5 shows the geometry of the DFDP antenna. Energy is
coupled to the TRG from a rectangular pad that is connected to

Fig. 6. Return loss and gain of the DFDP antenna. The photographs are shown
in the inset (left for top view and right for bottom view).

the coaxial connector. By properly selecting the feeding position, the horizontal mode and the vertical mode could be excited
simultaneously.
Fig. 6 illustrates the return loss and gain of the antenna.
The photographs of the fabricated prototype are shown in the
inset. The measured results show that the antenna operates
at 8.36/11.3 GHz with a 10-dB return-loss bandwidth of
215 MHz (2.6%)/145 MHz (1.3%), respectively. Since the size
of the 120 TRG is only
( denotes the
free-space wavelength at 8.36 GHz), 28.2% that of the conventional triangular patch, the relative bandwidth is 65%/22% of
that of the single-band patch antenna on same substrate with
identical thickness. Also from Fig. 6, the measured peak gain
is 6.77 and 6.94 dBi, 0.3 and 0.5 dB lower than the simulated
results, which shows good agreement between simulations and
measurements. Moreover, the measured center frequency of the
gain bandwidth is lower than simulation, which corresponds to
the frequency shift of the return loss. This may be caused by

ZHANG et al.: TRIANGULAR RING ANTENNAS FOR DUAL-FREQUENCY DUAL-POLARIZATION OR CIRCULAR-POLARIZATION OPERATIONS

973

Fig. 7. Radiation patterns at 8.36 GHz in (a) E-plane, (b) H-plane (V-Pol for
vertical-polarization and H-Pol for horizontal polarization).
Fig. 9. Geometry of the CP antenna element. (a) Side view:
mm,
mm. Taconic TPG-30 is used as the bounding layer with a dielectric
,
constant of 3 and a loss tangent of 0.0038. (b) Top view:
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm.

Fig. 8. Radiation patterns at 11.3 GHz in (a) E-plane. (b) H-plane (V-Pol for
vertical-polarization and H-Pol for horizontal polarization).

fabrication errors and the inaccurate dielectric constant used in

the simulation.
In Figs. 7 and 8, the radiation patterns are shown. It could be
observed that the DFDP antenna displays stable radiations in
normal direction at both frequencies. The ripples on the radiation patterns may be caused by the reflection of waves during
the measurement. The cross-polarization level at the lower
frequency and higher frequency is below 20 and 16.5 dB,
respectively.

Fig. 10. Simulated axial ratio and return loss of the CP antenna element.

IV. CP ANTENNA ELEMENT AND ARRAY

A. Antenna Design
Fig. 9 shows the configuration of the CP antenna element.
Two layers of substrates with a layer of copper in the center are
used to separate the radiating element and feeding lines. This
configuration is adopted for the consideration of the SR array
design. The simulated axial ratio (AR) and return loss are shown
in Fig. 10, which demonstrates a good CP quality.
Then, the four-element SR array is developed as shown in
Fig. 11. For the four-element SR array, the element spacing is
found to be a key factor that affects SLLs as shown in Fig. 12.
It could be observed that due to the geometry advantage of the
TRG, the mutual coupling level is very low. Finally, the element
spacing is selected as 18 mm, where the SLL is the smallest
(below 25 dB) based on Fig. 12.
B. Antenna Performances
The proposed four-element SR array is then fabricated and
measured. The CP gains and radiation patterns are measured by
a spinning linearly polarized horn antenna. In Fig. 13, the return

Fig. 11. Configuration of the four-element SR array:

(b) Bottom view.

mm. (a) Top view.

loss and gain are presented. The CP gain is calculated with the
following correction factor [11]:
(1)
where
is the maximum measured gain by a linear antenna
and is the measured AR. From 10 to 11.8 GHz, the measured
return loss is below 11 dB, while the simulated one is below
17.5 dB. The discrepancy may be caused by the parasitic effects of the resistors used for the Wilkinson power dividers. It
can be seen that the measured 3-dB gain bandwidth is 11.1%,

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 15. Measured radiation patterns of the four-element SR array at 10.8 GHz.
-plane. (b) In
-plane.
(a) In
Fig. 12. SLL and mutual coupling level (MCL) versus element spacing . Note:
The simulation uses four ideal feedings ports at 10.8 GHz, and the MCL is de.
fined as the maximum value among

antenna is developed to cover an FR of 1.1 to 1.45; meanwhile

with the 75 TRG, a CP antenna with good CP qualities is designed for the SR array, which shows a measured SLL of below
20 dB and an overlapped bandwidth (of return loss, axial ratio,
and gain) of 10%. The size of the TRG for DFDP/CP operations is only
, 28.2%/65.5%
that of the conventional triangular patch, where
denotes the
free-space wavelength. This kind of antennas has the advantages
of simple structure, low cost, and unidirectional radiation and
could be scaled for wireless systems such as satellite communications and WLAN.
REFERENCES

Fig. 13. Return loss and gain of the four-element SR array.

Fig. 14. Axial ratio of the four-element SR array.

ranging from 10.2 to 11.4 GHz with a peak of 11.8 dBic. In

Fig. 14, the simulated and measured ARs are illustrated. The
measured AR is below 3 dB from 10.1 to 11.5 GHz. In Fig. 15,
the measured radiation patterns are demonstrated. Taking into
consideration the correction factor in (1), the measured SLL
is below 20 dB. The discrepancy between the measured and
simulated SLL may be caused by the SMA connector used for
measurement.
V. CONCLUSION
A new type of antenna, the TRG antennas, is proposed for
DFDP and CP operations. With the 80 to 130 TRG, a DFDP

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