Bandwidth-Enhanced Circularly Polarized Spiral Antenna with Compact Size

Abstract

A compact circularly polarized (CP) spiral antenna with enhanced impedance and 3-dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidths that is fed by a tapered coax balun is presented. The antenna is composed of a two-arm nonself-complementarity planar equiangular spiral, a z-directional helix, absorbing material with a stepped cylindrical honeycomb structure, and a ground plane. The z-directional helix is used to extend the current path and to improve the impedance matching and AR in the low-frequency band. The coupling between the nonself-complementarity planar spiral arms is increased, which improves the impedance matching in the low-frequency band and the AR at approximately 5.55 GHz. The stepped cylindrical absorbing material can reduce the reverse current and improve the AR in the high-frequency band. The measured results show that the impedance bandwidth and 3-dB AR bandwidths range from 0.5 to 6 GHz and from 0.5 to 5.8 GHz, respectively. The overall size of the proposed antenna is 0.189λ L × 0.065λ L (diameter × height, where λ L is the free-space wavelength at the starting frequency).