Wide Bandwidth Dual Port, Dual Sense Circular Polarization Antenna for Satellite Applications

This paper presents a large bandwidth dual-sense-of circular polarization (CP) patch antenna working at X-band. The radiating element is suspended in air by three pins that are sequentially-fed to provide robust CP. The antenna feed network can switch from left-handed CP (LHCP) to right-handed CP (RHCP) on the base on the connected port and, being compact, can be placed at the back of the antenna ground plane. Furthermore, to minimize the cross-polarization at low elevation angles, the so called 'monopole fence', positioned around the metallic patch element, was proposed and designed to improve cross-polarization and to reduce the on axis gain for a wide beam-width.