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After rather cumbersome transformations which take the above notations into account we obtain the expressions which coincide with those in [7], (3). ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author is very much thankful to the anonymous reviewers whose valuable remarks and advice have improved the text of the communication. REFERENCES
[1] S. Ya. Braude et al., Decametric survey of discrete sources in the Northern sky. IThe UTR-2 radio telescope: Experimental techniques and data processing, Astrophys. Space Scie., vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 336, 1978. [2] T. J. W. Lazio et al., The low frequency array (LOFAR), Bull. Amer. Astron. Soc., vol. 34, no. 2, p. 748, 2002. [3] B. L. Diamond, A generalized approach to the analyzes of innite planar array antennas, Proc. IEEE, vol. 56, pp. 18371851, Nov. 1968. [4] J. M. Vigoureux, Polynomial formulation of reection and transmission by stratied planar structures, J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, vol. 8, pp. 16971701, Nov. 1991. [5] D. R. Rhodes, On a fundamental principle in the theory of planar antennas, Proc. IEEE, vol. 52, pp. 10131021, Sep. 1964. [6] R. C. Hansen, Dipole array scan performance over a wide-band, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-47, pp. 956957, Jul. 1999. [7] D. M. Pozar and D. H. Schaubert, Scan blindness in innite phased arrays of printed dipoles, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-32, pp. 602610, Jun. 1984.

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A Full-Wavelength Circularly Polarized Slot Antenna

Ka-Lam Lau, Hang Wong, and Kwai-Man Luk
AbstractA new single-feed technique for high gain operation of the circularly polarized cross-slot antenna backed by a ground reector is presented. The antenna, which has a size of one wavelength, exhibits a gain of 11 dBi over a 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 5%. Simulations are performed using an EM simulator IE3D and agree well with experimental results. Index TermsCircularly polarized antenna, high gain antenna, slot antenna, wireless applications. (b)

I. INTRODUCTION Circular polarization (CP) is most often used in satellite communications. There are a number of types of circularly polarized microstrip antennas. However, traditional microstrip CP antennas with a single feeding have an extremely narrow axial ratio bandwidth (1% or less) [1], [2]. Recently, many CP antennas have been studied to obtain wide axial ratio bandwidth. One of the techniques for enhancing axial ratio bandwidth is to excite slot radiation [3]. The axial ratio is not the only issue, it is also important to take into account to the antenna gain. Generally, the gain of CP microstrip antennas with single-fed structure is around 58.5 dBi [4]. Some applications (e.g., MSAT system and INMARSAT system) are requested the CP antenna to have moderate or high gain. A popular technique for gain enhancement of the CP antenna
Manuscript received March 7, 2005; revised August 11, 2005. The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2005.863155

(c) Fig. 1. (a) Geometry of the antenna (top view). (b) Geometry of the antenna (side view). (c) Current distribution of the antenna.

is to build up an antenna array [5]. Although using the antenna array is the most effective way to increase the gain, it also needs to design a complicated feed network.

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TABLE I DETAILED DIMENSIONS OF THE DESIGN

Fig. 2. SWR and gain against frequency. Fig. 3. Axial ratio against frequency.

In this paper, a high gain CP antenna is proposed by using single probe feed instead of using feed network. It achieves high gain by cutting two orthogonal slots on the patch with single-fed backed by a ground reector. The antenna yields around 11 dBi gain and exhibits reasonable 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 5%. II. ANTENNA DESCRIPTION The geometry of the designed antenna is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of a metallic plate, a shorting post, a coaxial cable, a bridge and a ground reector. The proposed antenna is operated at 2.45 GHz. The 1-mm-thick metallic plate with size of 124 mm(1o )2 124 mm (1o ) is supported by the shorting post and is placed 31 mm (1=4o ) above the ground reector. There are two L-slots cut on the metallic plate. Each L-slot has arms a = (60 mm; 0:49o ) and b = (53 mm; 0:43o ). The ratio of a : b is selected as 1.13:1 to provide the necessary phase difference for circular-polarization generation. The two L-slots are arranged as indicated in Fig. 1. The shorting post and the coaxial cable are placed close to the centre of the metallic plate, which located at P1 and P2 respectively. The outer radius and inner radius of the shorting post is 2.2 mm and 1.2 mm while the coaxial cable having the same radius correspondingly. The shorting post is mainly for generating symmetric radiation patterns and the coaxial cable is formed by inserting a probe inside with 0.5 mm radius. For one wavelength slot, the impedance is close to 50 ohm. Since the length of L-slots is around one wavelength, the input impedance of the slot at Zs is close to 50 ohm. From experiment, we found that the impedance Zs is 54 ohm. Therefore, a coaxial cable is designed to have a length of 1=4o with characteristic impedance ZT equals to 52 ohm such that it can act a role of

transformer. As a result, ZS can be transformed from 54 ohm to 50 ohm at the terminal. There is a copper bridge across the two L-slots placed 1 mm above the metallic plate. One end of the bridge is connected to the probe of the coaxial cable while the other end is shorted to the metallic plate. The act of the bridge is to form the excitation of the two L-slots. The current distribution of the metallic plate is shown in Fig. 1(c) to conrm that the slots are contributing to the radiation. The size of ground reector is about 240 mm (2o ) 2 240 mm (2o ). Details of the dimensions are shown in Table I. III. RESULTS The designed antenna was fabricated and tested. The SWR (Fig. 2) of the antenna was measured by a HP8510C Network Analyzer while the axial ratio (Fig. 3), radiation patterns (Fig. 4) and gain (Fig. 2) were measured by a Antenna measurement system HP85310C. Simulations were performed using an EM simulator IE3D. The proposed antenna is operated at 2.45 GHz. Fig. 2 shows the simulated and measured SWR and gain of the proposed antenna. The SWR is less than 2.0 over a frequency range of about 16% (2.32.7 GHz). Although the simulated SWR has slightly frequency shifted, it conrms the wide bandwidth characteristics. A maximum gain of 11 dBi is observed, which is relatively high gain for single-element antenna. Both measured and simulated gains agree well with each other. Fig. 3 shows the simulated and measured axial ratio against frequency. The axial ratio bandwidth of 5% (<3 dB) is achieved over the frequency range from 2.42.53 GHz. And, broadside radiation patterns are shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b). The antenna has 3 dB beamwidth of 45 at both x 0 z and y 0 z planes.

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[3] S. Shi, K. Hirasawa, and Z. N. Chen, Circularly polarized rectangularly bent slot antennas backed by a rectangular cavity, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 49, no. 11, pp. 15171524, Nov. 2001. [4] H. Iwasaki, A circularly polarized small-size microstrip antenna with a cross slot, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-44, no. 10, pp. 13991401, Oct. 1996. [5] M. E. Bialkowski and N. C. Karmakar, A two-ring circular phasedarray antenna for mobile satellite communications, IEEE Antennas and Propag. Mag., vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 1423, Jun. 1999.

Millimeter-Wave Circular Polarized Beam-Steering Antenna Array for Gigabit Wireless Communications
Kao-Cheng Huang and Zhaocheng Wang
AbstractThis paper presents a 2 2 beam steering antenna with circular polarization at 61 GHz for high speed communications. It demonstrates approximately 14 dBi directivity and twenty degree half power beamwidth. The cross polarization is at least 14 dB. Design method, simulation, manufacture and characterization of the antenna are presented. The proposed small-scale array antenna is suitable for various high speed wireless applications. Index TermsAntenna arrays, beam steering, ceramics, circular polarization, millimeter wave.

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I. INTRODUCTION In recent years, research for wireless communications has moved into the Gbps era. To develop such high data-rate systems, the 61 GHz ISM band is proposed because of its wide bandwidth and free spectrum cost [1]. As indoor channel measurement at 60 GHz has been characterized [2], it shows that the antenna with appropriate beam pattern can make wireless channels reliable and efcient. Also it is vital to develop a new antenna, which mitigates the effect of inter-symbol interference, caused by the channel multipath delay spread. To design such antennas, several issues must be addressed. First, polarizations are considered to reduce the multipath effect. Circular polarization is particularly suitable for the line-of-sight link as receivers can distinguish the line-of-sight signal from other reected signals with opposite polarization. Second, in a multipath environment, sharp beam antennas can be used to reduce the number of multipath signals and therefore to minimize the root-mean-square delay spreads. Besides, sharp beam antennas have high directivity, which is required by a Gbps wireless link. It can reduce the power consumption of millimeter wave circuits and simplify the complexity of baseband equalizers. Moreover, as directional antennas with small half power beamwidth only cover certain angles, beam steering functions are employed to extend its range and to make communication coverage adaptive. An antenna with the features above is presented in this paper. Although several research papers on rectangular horn array antennas with linear polarization at millimeter wave range have been presented [3], [4], little research is conducted to make circular polarization antennas

(b) Fig. 4. Radiation pattern at (a) phi = 0 and (b) phi = 90 .

IV. CONCLUSION A new single-feed circularly polarized slot antenna is designed. It consists of two orthogonal slots on a metallic plate and a bridge which couples energy from the feed to the slots for circular polarization radiation. By this new method, a high antenna gain (11 dBi) can be achieved by choosing one wavelength as the antenna size. Besides, the proposed antenna exhibits a reasonable impedance bandwidth (16% for VSWR < 2) and a wide axial ratio bandwidth (5% for AR < 3 dB). REFERENCES
[1] J. R. James, P. S. Hall, and C. Wood, Microstrip Antenna Theory and Design. London, U.K.: Peter Peregrinus Ltd., 1981. [2] I. J. Bahl and P. Bhartia, Microstrip Antennas. New York: Artech House, 1980.

Manuscript received July 18, 2005; revised September 27, 2005. K.-C. Huang is with the School of Engineering, University of Greenwich, Chatham ME4 4TB, U.K. (e-mail: k.huang@gre.ac.uk). Z. Wang is with the Beijing Net Instrument Co. Ltd, Beijing, China. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2005.863158

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