IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 66, NO.
1, JANUARY 2018
A Broadband Dual Circularly Polarized Conical
Four-Arm Sinuous Antenna
Shufeng Zheng , Member, IEEE, Steven Gao, Senior Member, IEEE, Yingzeng Yin, Qi Luo, Member, IEEE,
Xiaodong Yang , Senior Member, IEEE, Wei Hu, Member, IEEE, Xueshi Ren, Member, IEEE, and Fan Qin
Abstract— A novel wideband four-arm sinuous antenna with
dual circular polarizations (CPs) and unidirectional radiation
is proposed. Different from the conventional designs, this sin-
uous antenna is realized in a conical form and no ground
plane or absorptive cavity is required to obtain unidirectional
radiation. The beamforming network for dual circularly polar-
ized operations consists of a wideband quadrature coupler and
two wideband baluns, and an auxiliary feeding patch is intro-
duced to facilitate the connection between baluns and sinuous
arms. The design of baluns and coupler is inspired from the
printed exponentially tapered microstrip balun and broadside-
coupled microstrip coupler, respectively. The dynamic differen-
tial evolution algorithm is employed to optimize the geometry
of coupler for optimal performance. For both polarizations,
the presented antenna has wide impedance bandwidth, good axial
ratio, moderate realized gain, and front-to-back ratio within
2–5 GHz. An antenna prototype is fabricated and tested. The
agreement between simulation and measurement results validates
the proposed antenna framework. The demonstrated antenna has
advantages of wide bandwidth, dual CPs, unidirectional radia-
tion, lightweight, and low cost, and is promising for applications
in wireless systems.
Index Terms— Conical, dual circular polarizations (CPs),
dynamic differential evolution, frequency-independent antenna,
sinuous antenna, wideband coupler.
I. I NTRODUCTION
B ROADBAND antennas are capable of radiating waves
with two orthogonal senses of polarizations are highly
desirable in some applications such as wireless commu-
nication, electronic warfare, radio astronomy, and remote
sensing systems [1]. Frequency-independent antennas are
potential solutions due to their broadband impedance and
radiation characteristics over several octaves [1]–[3]. Spiral
antennas [4]–[10] and log-periodic antennas [11]–[17] are
Manuscript received October 15, 2016; revised August 20, 2017; accepted
October 4, 2017. Date of publication November 10, 2017; date of current
version January 2, 2018. This work was supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China under Grant 61671349 and Grant 61501340.
(Corresponding authors: Shufeng Zheng; Steven Gao; Xiaodong Yang.)
S. Zheng, Y. Yin, W. Hu, and X. Ren are with the National Key Laboratory
of Antennas and Microwave Technology and the Collaborative Innovation
Center of Information Sensing and Understanding, Xidian University,
Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail: sfzheng@xidian.edu.cn).
S. Gao and Q. Luo are with the School of Engineering and Digital Arts,
University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NT, U.K. (e-mail: s.gao@kent.ac.uk).
X. Yang is with the School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University,
Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail: xdyang@xidian.edu.cn).
F. Qin is with the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Services Networks,
Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2017.2772301
0018-926X © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
71
the most commonly used types of frequency-independent
antennas. However, conventional spiral antennas can only
radiate left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) or right-
handed circular polarization (RHCP) waves with the sense
of polarization specified by the winding direction of spirals.
With respect to log-periodic antennas, although two-arm log-
periodic antennas are inherently linearly polarized, and dual-
polarized frequency-independent mode (linear or circular) can
be achieved by constructing a multiarm structure with proper
excitations, log-periodic antennas are usually large, which
constrain their applications. Some methods were proposed
to address the drawbacks of conventional configurations.
For instance, the modulated arm width spiral antenna was
designed to have dual CP operation of frequency-independent
modes [8]–[10]. A miniaturized log-periodic antenna loaded
with a coupling ring was proposed in [14], although the true
frequency-independent principles were destroyed under the
turn-ON frequency determined by the original log-periodic
structure. This method was further improved in slot config-
uration with better dual CP performance obtained beyond
the turn-ON frequency [15]. Sinuous antennas, which evolve
from log-spiral antennas and log-periodic antennas, are another
type of frequency independent antennas [18]–[27]. Owing to
the interleaved structure, sinuous antennas have much smaller
aperture sizes compared with log-periodic antennas.
Although conical spiral antennas [5], [6] and conical log-
periodic antennas [16], [17] have been realized and testified,
most studies on sinuous antennas are focused on the planar
framework which usually incorporate a reflective or absorptive
cavity to obtain unidirectional radiation [19]–[24].
Unfortunately, the introduction of cavity not only complicates
the structure but also deteriorates the performance of the
original sinuous aperture due to the contamination of the
reflected backward radiation or power dissipation by absorber.
Dielectric lens can be employed to redirect the majority of
radiated power of a sinuous aperture to one side, but it is
usually bulky and inconvenient to fabricate [22]–[24]. It was
pointed out in [18] that conical sinuous structure can radiate
unidirectionally with its frequency independence retained.
However, few embodiments of conical configurations can
be found in the open literature. A conical two-arm sinuous
antenna was presented in [25], but it was not frequency
independent and the sense of polarization varied alternatively
between adjacent bands. In [26], a conical four-arm
sinuous aperture printed on an inverted cone with a ground
plane backed was proposed to achieve wide bandwidth,
unidirectional radiation, and dual linearly polarized operation.
72 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 66, NO. 1, JANUARY 2018

The ground plane is used to offer the virtual images of

sinuous arms with the location fixed to a quarter wavelength
above the ground plane.
In this paper, a novel conical four-arm sinuous antenna
which can achieve unidirectional radiation, dual CPs, and
wideband performance within 2–5 GHz is proposed. Different
from [26], this proposed sinuous antenna is dual circularly
polarized, moreover, the design idea is inspired by the
operating mechanism of conical log-spiral antenna and conical
log-periodic antenna presented in [5] and [17] where log-spiral
(or log-periodic) arms were projected on cone without ground
plane and the suppression of backward radiation was simply
Fig. 1. Spatial quasi-log sinuous curve. (a) Top view. (b) Front view.
achieved by decreasing the flare angle of cone. This paper is a
significant extension of the conference paper [27], where some
preliminary results of simulations of the conical four-arm
sinuous antenna were reported. In this paper, in-depth
theoretical analysis and detailed design of beamforming
network that excites sinuous arms for dual circularly
polarized operations are presented. The beamforming network
is composed of two printed exponentially tapered microstrip
baluns and a broadside-coupled microstrip quadrature coupler.
Dynamic differential evolution is employed to optimize the
geometry of coupler for optimal performance over the desired
Fig. 2. Top view of the conical four-arm sinuous aperture.
frequency range. The proposed antenna is characterized both
theoretically and experimentally exhibiting the advantages
of wide impedance bandwidth, good AR, moderate realized which is then duplicated rotationally with 2π/N increments to
gain, and front-to-back ratio (FBR) for both senses of CPs. construct N-arm sinuous aperture. Fig. 2 shows the top view
To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first of the conical four-arm sinuous aperture.
implementation of a conical four-arm sinuous antenna with Similar to spiral antennas, principles of operation of
unidirectional radiation and dual CPs. This paper is organized tight interleaved circularly polarized sinuous aperture can be
as follows. The principles of operation of the sinuous antenna explained by using the radiating ring theory and eigen-mode
including the radiating ring theory, eigen-mode excitations, excitations [1]. Inspired by the fact that spiral antennas can
and beamforming network are presented in Section II. be constructed in a conical form to suppress the backward
The modeling and simulation results of sinuous aperture, radiation and increase the radiation toward cone apex [5], it is
beamforming network, and their integration are discussed in reasonable to expect that the directivity and the FBR of conical
Section III. In Section IV, measurement and discussion are sinuous antenna can be increased as the flare angle of the
presented. A concluding remark is given in Section V. cone (θ0 ) is reduced.
According to the radiating ring theory, a sinuous aperture
II. T HEORY OF O PERATION should be truncated at the proper position to support the first
active region, avoid the excitation of high-order active regions,
A. Sinuous Aperture and diminish the end effect. The radii of active regions enlarge
The proposed conical sinuous antenna is designed based on as the operating frequency decreases. As a result, the highest
the spatial quasi-log sinuous curve, which is the projection of and lowest operating frequencies of the sinuous aperture are
a planar quasi-log sinuous curve [18] on a cone, given by virtually determined by the radius of top and bottom circle of
⎧ ⎡  ⎤ the cone. Suggested values for planar configuration are given
⎪
⎪ π ln r
⎪
⎪ϕ(r ) = (−1) p α sin ⎣ Rp as [1], [18]
⎨ ⎦, R p+1 ≤ r ≤ R p
p
ln(τ p ) ⎧
(1) ⎪ (m H + 0.5)λ L
⎪
⎪ ⎨R 1 ≥
⎪
⎪ r − R K π
⎩z(r ) = H ⎪ λH (3)
R K − R1 ⎩ RK ≤
8(α K + δ)
where r , ϕ, and z are the cylindrical coordinates of the curve,
and H is the height of cone; p is the number of segment and where λ L and λ H are the guided wavelength for the lowest
varies between 1 and K − 1; and α p and τ p represent the and highest operating frequencies and m H is the mode order
angular width and the growth rate of each segment, given as of the highest desired mode of operation.
Different modes of operation can be realized with eigen-
R p+1
τp = . (2) mode excitations (or characteristic feedings) to sinuous arms.
Rp Since an arbitrary excitation can be regarded as a combina-
The spatial sinuous curve, as shown in Fig. 1, is rotated tion of eigen-mode excitations, it is convenient to analyze
by ±δ with respect to the axis of the cone to form one arm, the mode of operation with eigen-mode excitation. For an
ZHENG et al.: BROADBAND DUAL CIRCULARLY POLARIZED CONICAL FOUR-ARM SINUOUS ANTENNA 73

Fig. 3. Framework of beamforming network and the resulting excitations for

dual CP operations. (a) Framework of beamforming network. (b) Resulting Fig. 4. Antenna geometry (sinuous arms are not shown for clarity) and
excitations. zoomed-in view of feeding patch.

TABLE I
N-arm sinuous aperture with rotational symmetry, provided G EOMETRY PARAMETERS OF S INUOUS A PERTURE
the number of the desired mode is m, the desired excitation
is given as [28]
− j 2π m(k−1)
Ik,m = I0m e N (4)
where k = 1, . . . , N denotes the arm number, and I0m is a
constant amplitude of the current. The current conservation
condition should be satisfied, given by

N
Ik,m = 0.
k=1
From (4) and (5), it can be concluded that for the four-arm
cone sinuous aperture shown in Fig. 2, the required excitation
for mode 1 is I01 {1, j , −1, − j }, which produce the LHCP
radiation toward +z-direction. The excitation of I03 {1, − j ,
−1, j } is needed for mode 3 (or mode −1) which corresponds
to the RHCP radiation toward +z-direction.
B. Beamforming Network
To achieve dual CPs for the conical four-arm sinuous
aperture shown in Fig. 2, required excitations for mode +1 and
mode −1 have to be realized simultaneously. A beamforming
network illustrated in Fig. 3(a) can be utilized to provide the
desired excitations. Due to the quadrature characteristics of
coupler (equal in magnitude and orthogonal in the phase of the
two outputs when signal is input at LHCP or RHCP port) and
phase inversion characteristics of baluns, desired excitations
to each arm for both polarizations can be accomplished.
Baluns also provide the necessary impedance transformation
of sinuous arms from their input impedances seen from the
feed points of the sinuous aperture into port impedances of
the coupler. The input impedance of sinuous antenna for
different modes can be determined by using Deschamps’
formula [29]. For a self-complementary N-arm structure in
free space, the input impedance of a single arm to the ground
is
η0
Zm =  mπ (6)
4 sin
N Structure parameters of the conical sinuous aperture are
where η0 = 120π
is the intrinsic impedance of free space listed in Table I. The outer and inner radius of sinuous aperture
and m is the number of mode in operation. According to (6),
impedances across arm 1 and arm 3 (also arm 2 and arm 4) for
mode +1 and mode −1 are computed to be 266
. Note that ration. The height of the cone H is determined to obtain an
(5) the dielectric loading of supporting substrate can decrease the
theoretical values.
III. S IMULATIONS AND P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS
Based on the framework of beamforming network and
sinuous aperture illustrated in Fig. 3, a conical four-arm
sinuous antenna with dual CP operations is proposed, as shown
in Fig. 4. The sinuous aperture is basically defined by the
guidelines presented in Section II, and an auxiliary feeding
patch is incorporated to facilitate the connection between
conical sinuous aperture and planar beamforming network.
Considering the requirements of wide bandwidth and ease of
connection, a broadside-coupled microstrip line coupler and
two printed exponentially tapered microstrip baluns are used
to constitute the beamforming network. The geometry and
simulation results of these modules and their integrations are
presented in this section.
A. Sinuous Aperture
Since sinuous arms are constructed on a cone and it is dif-
ficult to connect them with the beamforming network directly,
an auxiliary circular feeding patch is designed and positioned
at the top of the cone. A narrow area of the feeding patch is
removed to form a slot so that the baluns can be combined.
As shown in Fig. 4, the stripes printed on the feeding patch
are composed of straight and arc segments. These stripes are
symmetric with the midperpendicular of slot except that one
segment is etched on the opposite side of the patch with two
vias used to avoid intersection.
(i.e., R1 and R K ) can be estimated by using formula (3). Note
that these approximate values may vary for conical configu-
74
Fig. 5. Simulated input resistance of sinuous aperture with various values
of w0 (LHCP case).
Fig. 6. Simulated boresight AR of sinuous aperture with various values of
w0 (LHCP case).
FBR greater than 10 dB. α p is kept constant for each segment
and δ is set to be π/N to maintain the self-complementarity.
τ p can be set to vary in a linear way so that the arms are wound
more closely at the outer edge of the aperture, given as
τ p = τ1 − τ · ( p − 1).
Since the operation mechanism and design guidelines of
sinuous aperture have been presented in Section II, the para-
meter analysis is not given here for brevity. However, it is
worth pointing out that the width of strips feeding four
arms (w0 ) is critical to the performance of sinuous aperture.
As shown in Figs. 5 and 6, an increase of w0 helps to decrease
the input impedance but boresight axial ratio (AR) becomes
worse. In fact, due to the coupling of strips which feed four
sinuous arms, the purity of polarization is contaminated and
AR deteriorates consequently when w0 is increased. Note that
the analysis is based on LHCP case and results for RHCP case
are similar. Therefore, they are not shown here for clarity.
B. Beamforming Network
As indicated in Fig. 3, a beamforming network composed
of a quadrature coupler and two baluns can provide the
sinuous aperture with required excitations for LHCP and
RHCP radiations. The wideband quadrature coupler can be
realized with broadside-coupled microstrip lines, which is
compact in size, easy to fabricate, and integrate with baluns.
On the other hand, two pairs of printed parallel stripe lines
are preferred to feed four sinuous arms from the viewpoint of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 66, NO. 1, JANUARY 2018
Fig. 7. Geometry of exponentially tapered microstrip baluns.
TABLE II
G EOMETRY PARAMETERS OF BALUNS
Fig. 8. Simulated S-parameters of exponentially tapered microstrip baluns.
(7) symmetry of excitation and compactness. Therefore, exponen-
tially tapered microstrip baluns are the best choice for offering
wideband balanced-to-unbalanced transition and impedance
transformation.
The geometry of baluns is shown in Fig. 7 and relevant
parameters are listed in Table II. Note that necessary modifi-
cations of balun structure are applied to facilitate the assembly
with the conical sinuous aperture. Simulation results of the
designed baluns are given in Fig. 8, from which it can be
seen that insertion loss is less than 1 dB, reflection coefficient
is less than −17 dB, and isolation is better than 24 dB at
frequencies 2–5 GHz.
Wideband quadrature coupling characteristics of the pro-
posed coupler are realized on basis of broadside-coupled
microstrip lines. As shown in Fig. 9, two patterned microstrip
lines are coupled through the patterned aperture on their com-
mon ground plane. Two vias are used to transfer the microstrip
traces to the opposite layer so that it can be directed to the
baluns directly. Consequently, compensation sections (bent
microstrip trace sections) are needed to correct the phase
deviation caused by the vias. The hole at the center of the
coupler is reserved for the ease of assembly. In this paper,
the patterned microstrip lines and aperture are composed of
fragmented sections, and DE algorithm [30] is employed to
ZHENG et al.: BROADBAND DUAL CIRCULARLY POLARIZED CONICAL FOUR-ARM SINUOUS ANTENNA 75

Fig. 9. Geometry of broadside-coupled microstrip coupler.

TABLE III Fig. 10. Simulated S-parameters of broadside-coupled microstrip coupler.

C ONTROL PARAMETERS OF DYNAMIC D IFFERENTIAL
E VOLUTION A LGORITHM TABLE IV
G EOMETRY PARAMETERS OF C OUPLER

optimize their sizes. It was demonstrated in [31] that the

control parameters are critical to the performance of DE and
it is beneficial to change them dynamically or adaptively
during the evolution process. A simple yet efficient DE is used
here, of which the mutation scale factor (F) and crossover
factor (CR) change dynamically against the generation while
the population size (NP) is kept fixed during the evolution
process. More specifically, F decreases while CR increases
in a nonlinear way so as to balance the exploration and
exploitation ability of the algorithm at different stages of
optimization process, given by

F = F0 · 2λ
(8)
λ = e− G max +1−G
G

⎧
⎪
⎨CR = CRmin + (CR max − CRmin ) · eα
 b
G (9)
⎪
⎩α = −a 1 − Fig. 11. Simulated S-parameters of beamforming network.
G max
where F0 , CRmin , and CRmax are predefined parameters. and set to be −3.2 dB considering the loss and reflection.
G is the number of generation and G max is the maximum c1 , c2 , and c3 are the weights of magnitude imbalance of
generation. a and b are predefined constants. The control two quadrature outputs, return loss, and isolation, and set
parameters of dynamic differential evolution algorithm are to be 1. The optimized geometry parameters of coupler and
listed in Table III. corresponding scattering parameters are presented in Table IV
The objective of optimization is to minimize the imbalance and Fig. 10, respectively. Fig. 10 shows that the magnitude of
of two quadrature outputs, reflection at input port, and cou- S21 changes between −3.8 and −2.7 dB, while the magnitude
pling at isolated port, so the fitness function can be defined of S31 changes between −3.6 and −2.8 dB, and the difference
as of magnitude is less than 1 dB at frequencies 2–5 GHz. On the
⎧     
⎪
⎪ F( x ) = c1 · max |S21 ( x ) − ref| + |S31 ( x ) − ref| other hand, the phase difference varies between 88° and 93°
⎪
⎪ f ∈[ f , f ]
⎨ min max
c2 c3 at these frequencies. The reflection coefficient and isolation is
+   
+    better than −18 and −17 dB, respectively, at these frequen-
⎪  max S11 ( x )   max S41 ( x ) 
⎪
⎪ f ∈[ f min , f max ] f ∈[ f min , f max ] cies. Therefore, favorable quadrature coupling characteristic is
⎪
⎩
x = (l, ws1 ∼ ws10 , wm1 ∼ wm10 ). obtained over the desired frequency range.
(10) The simulated S-parameters of the beamforming network
composed of a quadrature coupler and two baluns are pre-
The coupled microstrip lines and coupling aperture are sented in Fig. 11, which shows that the magnitude of S21 and
fragmented into 20 sections with the same length, and kept S31 change between −3.2 and −4.5 dB, while the reflection

symmetrical on their centerlines, so x is a 21-dimensional coefficient and isolation is better than −16 and −15 dB,
vector representing design solutions. ref is the reference value respectively. Also can be seen is that the magnitude imbalance
76 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 66, NO. 1, JANUARY 2018
Fig. 12. Simulated active VSWR of sinuous antenna.
Fig. 13. Simulated boresight AR of sinuous antenna.
of two quadrature outputs is less than 1.2 dB with the phase
difference varies between 88° and 92°. It can be inferred that
although the imperfect isolation and reflection of coupler and
baluns lead to slight deterioration of performance, the quadra-
ture characteristics of the beamforming network are still
achieved. Therefore, this optimized beamforming network can
be used to feed the sinuous aperture with required excitations
for LHCP and RHCP radiations, which is manifested by the
simulation performance of sinuous antenna with beamforming
network presented in Section III-C.
C. Sinuous Antenna With Beamforming Network
After designing sinuous aperture and its beamforming net-
work, it is necessary to combine them together and analyze
the performance as a whole. By geometrical refinements
of aperture, baluns, and coupler to ensure interconnectivity
between these modules, it is a quite straightforward way to
construct the sinuous antenna with beamforming network,
as shown in Fig. 4. The simulated active VSWR and bore-
sight AR for LHCP and RHCP operations are less than
2 and 3 dB, respectively, at frequencies 2–5 GHz, as shown
in Figs. 12 and 13. The simulated co-pol and x-pol realized
gain in boresight direction for LHCP and RHCP operations
are presented in Fig. 14. It is shown that the realized co-pol
gains for both polarizations are between 6 and 8.2 dB, and
their corresponding x-pol gain is at least 15 dB lower over the
frequencies range 2–5 GHz. Simulated radiation patterns of the
sinuous antenna for LHCP and RHCP operations are shown
Fig. 14. Simulated boresight realized gain of sinuous antenna.
Fig. 15. Simulated radiation pattern of sinuous antenna with LHCP excitation
at (a) 2 GHz; (b) 3 GHz; (c) 4 GHz; and (d) 5 GHz.
in Figs. 15 and 16, respectively. It can be observed that radi-
ation patterns are quite stable over the frequency range, and
FBR is better than 10 dB for the presented frequencies. The
simulation results indicate that the designed sinuous antenna
exhibits good dual CPs feature at the desired frequencies, and
performance of LHCP and RHCP operations are quite similar.
IV. M EASUREMENTS AND D ISCUSSION
Considering the performance of wideband quadrature
coupler is critical to the outcome of the dual polarized sinuous
antenna, a prototype of the optimized quadrature coupler
is fabricated and tested before the fabrication of sinuous
antenna with beamforming network, as presented in Fig. 17.
The prototype is printed on an Arlon Cuclad217 substrates
(εr = 2.17 and tan δ = 0.0009) with a thickness of 0.508 mm.
The measured S-parameters shown in Fig. 18 agree well with
the simulation results. It can be observed that difference of
magnitude is less than 1.1 dB, and the phase difference is
between 85° and 95.5° at frequencies 2–5 GHz. Return loss
and isolation are better than 14.5 dB.
As aforementioned, the quadrature coupler and two baluns
constitute the beamforming network, so the baluns are printed
on one of two dielectric substrates consisting of the coupler,
ZHENG et al.: BROADBAND DUAL CIRCULARLY POLARIZED CONICAL FOUR-ARM SINUOUS ANTENNA 77

Fig. 19. Photograph of fabricated beamforming network composed of baluns

and quadrature coupler. (a) Front view. (b) Back view.

Fig. 16. Simulated radiation pattern of sinuous antenna with RHCP excitation
at (a) 2 GHz; (b) 3 GHz; (c) 4 GHz; and (d) 5 GHz.

Fig. 20. Photograph of fabricated sinuous antenna.

Fig. 17. Photograph of the quadrature coupler prototype.

Fig. 21. Measured active VSWR of sinuous antenna prototype.

Fig. 18. Measured S-parameters of quadrature coupler prototype.

as shown in Fig. 19. To excite conical four sinuous arms,

the beamforming network is inserted into the narrow slot cut
on the feeding patch and positioned perpendicularly under-
neath the cone. Four sinuous arms are printed on a Kapton
substrate (εr = 3.8 and tan δ = 0.0036) with a thickness
of 0.125 mm and wrapped into a cone. Foam layers are used Fig. 22. Measured boresight AR and gain of sinuous antenna prototype.
as fixtures besides solderings on feeding patch. Fig. 20 shows
the sinuous antenna prototype under test. gain in boresight direction for each case of port excitation.
The measured active VSWR of the sinuous antenna proto- It can be observed that the boresight AR is less than 4 dB
type is shown in Fig. 21, which shows that the active VSWR is and boresight co-pol gain varies between 5.3 and 7.5 dB
smaller than 2.3 at frequencies 2–5 GHz for LHCP and RHCP at frequencies 2–5 GHz for both cases. The discrepancies
operations. Presented in Fig. 22 are measured AR and co-pol between the simulation and measured results are mainly
78 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 66, NO. 1, JANUARY 2018
Fig. 23. Measured radiation pattern of sinuous antenna with LHCP excitation
at (a) 2 GHz; (b) 3 GHz; (c) 4 GHz; and (d) 5 GHz.
Fig. 24. Measured radiation pattern of sinuous antenna with RHCP excitation
at (a) 2 GHz; (b) 3 GHz; (c) 4 GHz; and (d) 5 GHz.
attributed to the fabrication inaccuracy and misalignments
of position of the prototype. Measured radiation patterns
of the sinuous antenna for LHCP and RHCP operations
are shown in Figs. 23 and 24, respectively. Note that the
reduction of backward radiation compared with the simulated
ones was caused by the absorbers placed behind the antenna
prototype to suppress the interference from the fixture. Stable
patterns are obtained for both cases of polarizations within the
frequency range and acceptable consistency between two cases
is achieved. The differences between two cases are mainly
caused by the asymmetry of the structure of feeding patch and
coupler, fabrication tolerance, and inaccuracy of assembly.
It is worthpointing that, on basis of simulation analysis,
the bandwidth of the proposed sinuous antenna is mainly
limited by that of quadrature coupler, and a broadband conical
four-arm sinuous antenna with dual linear polarizations can be
obtained if the quadrature coupler is excluded. Nevertheless,
the obtained results demonstrate the validity of the proposed
framework that conical four-arm sinuous antenna can unidirec-
tionally radiate LHCP and RHCP waves efficiently without the
necessity of ground plane or absorptive cavity, which provides
a potential solution for applications where light-weighted
low-cost broadband dual circularly polarized antennas are
demanded. In addition, antenna performance can be improved
by using the emerging 3-D fabrication processes such as the
molded interconnect device technology in combination with
the laser direct structuring technique [17], which can increase
the precision of positioning during antenna assembly.
V. C ONCLUSION
A conical four-arm sinuous antenna is proposed in this
paper. The sinuous aperture is constructed on a cone for
unidirectional radiation, and a beamforming network is incor-
porated for dual CP operations. An auxiliary feeding patch is
designed to facilitate the connection between sinuous aperture
and beamforming network. The beamforming network consists
of two printed exponentially tapered microstrip baluns and
a broadside-coupled microstrip quadrature coupler. Dynamic
differential evolution algorithm is utilized to optimize the
geometry of coupler for optimal performance. The simulation
results of sinuous aperture, beamforming network, and their
integration are presented, respectively. Prototypes of the cou-
pler and sinuous antenna are fabricated and measured. Good
agreement between measurement and simulation results are
achieved, indicating that the proposed conical four-arm sinu-
ous antenna can provide unidirectional radiation of wideband
dual circularly polarized waves without the necessity of ground
plane or absorptive cavity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank S. Jakes and A. Mendoza
from the University of Kent, Canterbury, U.K., for their help
in antenna prototyping and measurements.
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Shufeng Zheng (S’10–M’13) received the Ph.D.
degree in electromagnetic field and microwave
technology from Xidian University, Xi’an, China,
in 2012.
He has been with the National Key Laboratory
of Antennas and Microwave Technology, Collabo-
rative Innovation Center of Information Sensing and
Understanding, Xidian University, since 2012, where
he is currently a Lecturer. His current research inter-
ests include wideband antennas, circularly polarized
antennas, reconfigurable antennas, frequency selec-
tive surfaces, and metamaterials.
79
Steven Gao (M’01–SM’16) received the Ph.D.
degree in microwave engineering from Shanghai
University, Shanghai, China, in 1999.
He is currently a Professor and the Chair of RF
and microwave engineering with the University
of Kent, Canterbury, U.K. He has authored more
than 250 papers and co-authored two books
including Space Antenna Handbook (Wiley, 2012)
and Circularly Polarized Antennas (IEEE-Wiley,
2014), and holds several patents in smart antennas
and RF. His current research interests include
smart antennas, phased arrays, satellite antennas, RF/microwave/millimeter-
wave/terahertz circuits, satellite communications, ultra-wideband radars,
synthetic-aperture radars, and mobile communications.
Yingzeng Yin received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.
degrees in electromagnetic wave and microwave
technology from Xidian University, Xi’an, China,
in 1987, 1990, and 2002, respectively.
From 1990 to 1992, he was a Research Assis-
tant and an Instructor at the Institute of Antennas
and Electromagnetic Scattering, Xidian University,
where he was an Associate Professor with the
Department of Electromagnetic Engineering from
1992 to 1996, and has been a Professor since 2004.
His current research interests include the design
of microstrip antennas, feeds for parabolic reflectors, artificial magnetic
conductors, phased array antennas, and computer aided design for antennas.
Qi Luo (S’08–M’12) received the M.Sc. degree
in data communications from the University of
Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K., in 2006, and the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering from the University
of Porto, Porto, Portugal, in 2012.
From 2012 to 2013, he was a Research Fellow
with the Surrey Space Center, Guildford, U.K. He is
currently a Research Associate with the School of
Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent,
Canterbury, U.K. His current research interests
include smart antennas, circularly polarized
antennas, reflectarray, multiband microstrip antennas, and electrically small
antenna design.
Xiaodong Yang (SM’17) received the Ph.D. degree
in electromagnetic field and microwave technology
from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 2012.
He is currently an Associate Professor with the
School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University.
His current research interests include body area net-
works, antennas and propagation, 5G, information
security, wireless sensing, radar, millimeter-wave
technology, terahertz technology, nanocommunica-
tions, biomedical nano-imaging, biomedical commu-
nications, visible light communications, calibration
of vector network analyzer, and machine learning.
Dr. Yang received the Young Scientist Award from the International Union
of Radio Science in 2014. He is on the editorial board of several IEEE
and IET journals, including the IEEE J OURNAL OF E LECTROMAGNETICS ,
RF AND M ICROWAVE IN M EDICINE AND B IOLOGY.
Wei Hu (S’09–M’14) received the B.S. degree in
electronic information engineering and the Ph.D.
degree in electromagnetic fields and microwave
technology from Xidian University, Xi’an, China,
in 2008 and 2013, respectively.
He is currently an Associate Professor with
the National Key Laboratory of Antennas and
Microwave Technology, Xidian University.
His current research interests include multiband
and wideband antennas, circularly polarized,
and dual-polarized antennas, and multi-in multi-out
technologies.
80 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 66, NO. 1, JANUARY 2018

Xueshi Ren (M’12) received the B.Eng. degree in
electronic information engineering and the Ph.D.
degree in electromagnetics and microwave tech-
nology from Xidian University, Xi’an, China,
in 2006 and 2011, respectively.
Since 2011, he has been a Lecturer with the School
of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University. His
current research interests include small antennas,
small dual-band antennas, microstrip antennas, array
antennas, wideband and multiband antennas, and
reflectarray antenna.
high-gain antennas, circularly polarized antennas, and antenna with orbital
angular momentum waves.
Fan Qin received the Ph.D. degree in
electromagnetic field and microwave technique from
Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an,
China.
He was a Visiting Ph.D. Student with the
University of Kent, Canterbury, U.K., from
2013 to 2015. He has been with the State Key
Laboratory of Integrated Services Networks, Xidian
University, Xi’an, since 2016, where he is currently
a Lecturer with the School of Telecommunications
Engineering. His current research interests include