Gain and bandwidth enhancements of sequential-fed circularly polarized patch antenna array using multiple parasitic elements

Abstract

This paper presents a circularly polarized (CP) antenna array with wideband operation and high gain characteristics. The single array element is composed of a slotted CP patch and parasitic elements. It has been found that besides improving the operating bandwidth (BW), properly choosing a number of parasitic elements can also contribute to a significant increase in the antenna gain over the entire operating band. For further boost in the performance, multiple array elements are arranged in 2 x 2 configuration and fed by a sequential-phase feeding network. In comparison with the related works in the literature, the proposed design shows approximately 3-dB higher gain. The design concept has been validated by experiments. The fabricated array has a measured operating BW of 28% (4.6-6.1 GHz) and a peak broadside gain of 15.8 dBic.