TY - JOUR
T1 - Compact, high directivity, omnidirectional circularly polarized antenna array
AU - Lin, Wei
AU - Ziolkowski, Richard W.
N1 - Funding Information: Manuscript received October 12, 2018; revised January 12, 2019; accepted March 13, 2019. Date of publication March 18, 2019; date of current version July 3, 2019. This work was supported in part by the Australian Research Council under Grant DP160102219 and in part by the UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship under Grant PRO18-6147. (Corresponding author: Wei Lin.) The authors are with the Global Big Data Technologies Center, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia (e-mail: [email protected]). Publisher Copyright: © 1963-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2019/7
Y1 - 2019/7
N2 - A compact omnidirectional circularly polarized (OCP) antenna system is reported, which achieves high directivity and operates with the 2.4 GHz WLAN band. It is formed by cascading several stages of electric (metallic strips) and magnetic (loops) radiators into a highly compact array. Two OCP antenna array designs are developed to demonstrate the approach and their resulting high directivities. First, a four-stage OCP antenna array is presented. It consists of three electric radiators (E-radiators) and four magnetic radiators (M-radiators) arranged in collinear formation. A prototype was realized by mechanically fabricating the folded copper loops. Measurements confirm that this compact cost-effective design generates OCP fields that have a 5.1 dBic peak LHCP realized gain in its horizontal plane. The overlapped impedance and AR bandwidth cover 130 MHz from 2.34 to 2.47 GHz. Second, a six-stage OCP antenna array with helical loops is implemented to further increase the directivity. Its prototype was realized with all-metal 3-D printing technology. Six stages of bar and helical loop radiators form five E-radiators and six M-radiators. This highly compact OCP array achieves a measured maximum realized gain of 7.1 dBic with a 110 MHz operational bandwidth that covers 2.37-2.48 GHz.
AB - A compact omnidirectional circularly polarized (OCP) antenna system is reported, which achieves high directivity and operates with the 2.4 GHz WLAN band. It is formed by cascading several stages of electric (metallic strips) and magnetic (loops) radiators into a highly compact array. Two OCP antenna array designs are developed to demonstrate the approach and their resulting high directivities. First, a four-stage OCP antenna array is presented. It consists of three electric radiators (E-radiators) and four magnetic radiators (M-radiators) arranged in collinear formation. A prototype was realized by mechanically fabricating the folded copper loops. Measurements confirm that this compact cost-effective design generates OCP fields that have a 5.1 dBic peak LHCP realized gain in its horizontal plane. The overlapped impedance and AR bandwidth cover 130 MHz from 2.34 to 2.47 GHz. Second, a six-stage OCP antenna array with helical loops is implemented to further increase the directivity. Its prototype was realized with all-metal 3-D printing technology. Six stages of bar and helical loop radiators form five E-radiators and six M-radiators. This highly compact OCP array achieves a measured maximum realized gain of 7.1 dBic with a 110 MHz operational bandwidth that covers 2.37-2.48 GHz.
KW - 3-D printing technology
KW - antenna array
KW - circular polarization
KW - electric radiators (E-radiators) and magnetic radiators (M-radiators)
KW - high directivity
KW - omnidirectional patterns
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068879273&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85068879273&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TAP.2019.2905721
DO - 10.1109/TAP.2019.2905721
M3 - Article
SN - 0018-926X
VL - 67
SP - 4537
EP - 4547
JO - IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
JF - IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
IS - 7
M1 - 8668527
ER -