A Broadband Folded Printed Quadrifilar Helical Antenna Employing a Novel Compact Planar Feeding Circuit

A Broadband Printed Quadrifilar Helical Antenna With a Novel Compact Broadband Feeding Network

“…To overcome the problems of multipath fading and polarization mismatch between ground antenna receivers and satellites, circularly polarized (CP) antennas exhibiting an excellent axial ratio over the operating band and over a wide beamwidth are then required [1][2][3][4][5][6][7].…”

“…Therefore, PQHAs with broadband properties is required. In the last two decades, to broaden the operating bandwidth, several techniques have been suggested in published works and several broadband PQHAs (BPQHAs) have been proposed [1,[4][5][6].…”

“…Nevertheless, conventional power dividers have large dimensions, and commercial 90 • hybrids couplers are not practical for BPQHAs [1,7]. Therefore, it is essential to design a simple and compact feeding network with a wide operating bandwidth for the BPQHA.…”

A Folded Printed Quadrifilar Helical Antenna Employing a Compact Feeding Network

“…Circularly polarized antenna has been generally used in satellite communication systems due to their insensitivity to ionospheric polarization rotation [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. In many applications such as mobile satellite communication and position-location, the systems require antennas exhibiting a good radiation performance with a wide beamwidth over the operating band.…”

“…Moreover, for feeding the four helix arms with equal power and 90 • of phase shifting between adjacent ports, the conventional network is relatively large in size at low frequency [2]. And external or commercial feeding system providing almost ideal magnitude and phase shifting is not practical for antenna system [1,[4][5][6][7]. Therefore, PQHAs with a compact size employing a simple and compact feeding network are then required.…”