IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

5, 2006 101

An Advance Design Approach for Circular

Polarization of the Microstrip Antenna
With Unbalance DGS Feedlines
Jay Prakash Thakur and Jun-Seok Park

Abstract—A novel design approach is offered to attain circular
polarization of the microstrip antenna fed by unbalanced vertical
feedlines. Usually, diagonally balanced-line feeds with hybrid
couplers are used to attain circular polarization. Here, defected
ground structures (DGSs) have been implemented under the
unbalanced feedlines to achieve circular polarization. Adopting
DGSs make it easy to tune antennas for circular polarization by
varying the impedance of the feedlines.
Index Terms—Branch line coupler, circular polarization, de-
fected ground structures (DGSs), dual feed, microstrip antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
feedlines. To minimize the size, most of this type of antenna
requires two-layer structure.
Size reduction and gaining circular polarization of the mi-
crostrip antenna using a single layer substrate is still a burning
topic of research between microwave researcher communities.
This letter presents the circular polarization of a microstrip an-
tenna with edge-coupled feeding structures including branch
line couplers in a single layer substrate. Defected ground
structures (DGSs) have been implemented under the feedlines
for circular polarization of the patch antenna. The presented
designs can easily be extended to other bands satellite and
terrestrial systems that require circularly polarized antennas.

R ECENTLY, there has been increasing demand of mi-

crowave and mobile communication systems, with multiple
applications gaining attention to improve the performance of
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
Fig. 1 shows the structure of the proposed antenna with
the antenna. Most of the wireless communication systems
DGSs, mounted on a grounded FR4 substrate of the dimensions
need a circular polarized antenna to establish a communi-
60 80 . The FR4 substrate used in the experiment has a
cation link between a satellite (or base station) and mobile
thickness of 3.2 mm and a relative permittivity of 4.4. Initially,
device. Generally, compact handheld communication devices
the dimension of the patch, 34 33 , has been chosen for
such as personal communication systems, mobile handsets,
two very close (2.15 and 2.2 GHz) resonant frequencies excited
and radio frequency identification (RFID) systems required
by two orthogonal feeds to the get-wide frequency bandwidth.
lightweight, cost effective, small size, and circular polarized
These feedlines coupled at the edge of the antenna. The 90
antenna. Adopting microstrip antenna technology can fulfill
hybrid coupler was designed for center frequency 2.18 GHz
these requirements. Various design techniques for circular po-
and two outputs of the coupler connected to the feedlines of the
larization have been suggested in previous publications and
patch to excite orthogonal mode of the antenna. Dimensions of
a variety of feeding techniques to achieve high isolation and
the fabricated patch with the feeding structure on the top of the
good cross-polarization levels between the two polarizations
FR4 substrate is shown in Fig. 1(a).
have been demonstrated [1]. The related feeding techniques
Further, two vertical DGSs are constructed on the ground plan
include the use of two slot-coupled feeds with two crossed
to match the feedlines impedance to the input impedance of the
narrow slots, two offset narrow slots, two proximity-coupled
patch. The dimensions of the DGSs on the ground plan is shown
feeds, or a microstrip line feed and a microstrip line probe
in Fig. 1(b). All the dimensions shown in Fig. 1 are in millime-
feed, and so on [2]–[6]. Hybrid couplers with balanced mi-
ters. For feeding the antenna one of the two isolated ports of the
crostrip feedlines are one of the best choices for circular
hybrid coupler is connected to the input source and another one
polarization but input impedance matching with a balance
is terminated by 50 .
line is very difficult and it also increases the length of the

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Manuscript received November 23, 2005; revised January 12, 2006. This
work was supported by Grant 2003-000-10232-0 from the Korea Science and
Engineering Foundation.
The authors are with the School of Electrical Engineering, Kookmin Uni-
versity, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 136-702, South Korea (e-mail: jayprakash_t@hot-
mail.com; jspark@kookmin.ac.kr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2006.872425
1536-1225/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
Initially, the vertical edge coupled microstrip line feeds patch
antenna has been designed and simulated using the high-fre-
quency structure simulator for two very close frequency bands
as discussed in the design part. Further, the branch line cou-
pler is incorporated to provide 90 phase shift and provide
better isolation between two feeds. The test structure of the
102
Fig. 1. Proposed antenna. (a) Top plan. (b) Ground plan with DGSs.
antenna (without DGSs) has been fabricated and measured, as
shown in Fig. 2. This structure provides a frequency band at
2.19–2.26 GHz (70-MHz bandwidth). This band can be varied
with physical dimensions of the feedlines that were designed
between branch line coupler outputs, which feed to the edge of
the microstrip patch vertically, or we can say that this frequency
band can be changed by mismatching the input impedance of
the patch. Once dimensions of the patch as shown in Fig. 1 are
fixed, we can further change the impedance of the feedlines
by constructing the DGSs under the feedlines on the ground
plan without disturbing top plan [7]. Proper choice of DGSs’
dimensions provide circular polarization and size reduction of
the antenna. We have demonstrated this achievement in Fig. 2
by adopting two different dimensions in DGSs. It shows fre-
quency band shift from 2.19–2.26 GHz (70 MHz bandwidth)
to 2.1–2.26 GHz (160 MHz bandwidth). The impedance band-
width is defined as a range of frequencies over which the input
return loss is not smaller than a chosen value, usually 10 dB.
Fig. 2 shows frequency bands shifting between measured and
simulated results, which can be occur due to some fabrication
or simulation error. Fig. 3 shows the measured radiation pattern
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 5, 2006
Fig. 2. Return loss with and without DGSs.
Fig. 4. Measured VSWR: 2–2.7 GHz.
of the antenna in the azimuth - plane for horizontal, vertical,
right-hand circular polarization (RHCP), and left-hand circular
polarization (LHCP) at 2, 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 GHz. It is depicted
from Fig. 3(a) and (b) that the radiation pattern is almost the
same for these two polarizations that confirm the circular polar-
ization at this frequency band [2]. Maximum gain 0.77, , and
2.94 dBi have been achieved at 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 GHz frequen-
cies. Fig. 4 shows the measured VSWR is at the desired
frequency band.
IV. CONCLUSION
A newly designed circular polarized single layer microstrip
antenna with DGSs has been proposed and analyzed. Unbalance
feedlines with a hybrid coupler have been used to vertically
couple the edge of the patch. Circular polarization has been
achieved by controlling the impedance of the feedlines by
adopting DGSs. This type of antenna can be easily integrated
with the RFID reader system and also useful for other wireless
communication systems, which involve circular polarization.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank EMW Antenna Co., Ltd. for
providing antenna measurements facilities.
THAKUR AND PARK: ADVANCE DESIGN APPROACH FOR CIRCULAR POLARIZATION OF THE MICROSTRIP ANTENNA 103

Fig. 3. Measured radiation patterns on XZ-plan at 2000 (+), 2100 ( ), 2200 ( ), and 2300 () MHz. (a) Horizontal polarization. (b) Vertical polarization.
(c) RHCP d. LHCP.

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