A novel single-feed tri-band circularly polarized (CP) annular slot antenna is presented. The antenna structure is composed of two nonconcentric annular slots that are fed by an Lshaped series step impedance microstrip line configuration. The proposed antenna is designed to operate at the L 1 and L 2 bands of the global positioning system and the operating band of the compass navigation satellite system. Compared to the most of the previously reported tri-band CP antenna structure, the proposed antenna has low profile, compact size, and easy fabrication on the single-layer PCB. The measured results show that the impedance bandwidths are good for all bands. The axial ratio bandwidth and radiation patterns are also measured at the three resonant frequencies. The proposed compact tri-band CP antenna design is suitable for mounting onto the mobile communication devices and portable positioning systems.
IntroductionCircularly polarized (CP) antennas have received much attention for the applications of the wireless communication services such as global and positioning system (GPS) and other wireless communications and sensor systems, due to the advantages including immunity to Faraday rotation, mitigation of multipath propagation effects, and reduced antenna orientation constraints. A number of CP antennas have been designed and published [1][2][3][4][5]. For more demanding applications, such as surveying systems employing differential GPS, an antenna covering both L 1 and L 2 bands is useful. In China, compass navigation satellite system (CNSS), or named "BeiDou," has provided navigation and positioning services compatible with GPS. Thus, a multi-band CP antenna which can operate both at GPS and CNSS frequency bands is required. With the rapid development of wireless communication systems, multiple frequency bands antennas [6-10] have been developed to meet increasing demand for a modern portable wireless communication standard in a single system. In particular, various types of designs related to multi-band CP antennas have been reported [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Singlelayer designs using square and circular patches with several slits have been demonstrated in Li et al. [11]. Stacked-patch multi-band CP antennas have also been introduced [12-17]. A dual-band proximity-fed stacked patch antenna presented in [15] could cover L 1 =L 2 =L 5 GPS band, but two L-shaped probes and a 0°-90°hybrid were employed to ensure RHCP