Low-Profile Dual-Circularly Polarized Antenna Array With Hemispherical Scan Coverage
Yuxin Wang, Shi‐Wei Qu
Abstract
In this letter, a novel planar antenna array with hemispherical beam-coverage capabilities is proposed. The antenna units are arranged at different positions within a plane, and each unit possesses a specific orientation angle, which is algorithmically optimized to extend the spatial beam-scanning coverage of the antenna array. Compared to traditional spherical arrays and pyramidal arrays, the proposed one can significantly reduce the profile while maintaining hemispherical beam-coverage performance. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and measured to validate the design. The measured results demonstrate that it can achieve a gain of over 11 dBi for dual circular polarization with an axial ratio of below 3 dB in the operating frequency range of 2.5–3 GHz. Furthermore, the overall profile of the proposed antenna is as small as 0.48 <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">λ<sub>0</sub></i> ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">λ<sub>0</sub></i> is the free-space wavelength at 3 GHz).