Ferrite-based wideband circularly polarized microstrip antenna design

Abstract

In this paper, a wideband, circularly polarized patch antenna is proposed that leverages the unidirectional resonant modes of a circular patch mounted on top of a grounded dielectric-ferrite substrate. The proposed antenna is fed via the proximity coupling method and several parasitically coupled patches are placed on a dielectric superstrate to enhance the impedance bandwidth of the antenna. The resonant modes of the structure rotate only in the clockwise or counter clockwise directions. In the frequency range where the effective permeability of the ferrite layer is negative, the resonance frequencies of these modes differ significantly, which produces a large axial ratio (AR) bandwidth. For the proposed antenna, the numerical results show the 10 dB impedance bandwidth to be around 44% and the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth to be higher than 64%.