The 2021 International Telecommunications Conference, ITC-Egypt'2021
A Dual Circularly Polarized Omnidirectional Antenna
2021 International Telecommunications Conference (ITC-Egypt) | 978-1-6654-4574-0/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ITC-EGYPT52936.2021.9513931
July 13 - 15, 2021, ADC, Egypt
for Radar-Warning Receiver
Ahmed Alieldin1, Ahmed F. El-Agamy 1, Mohamed Mowafy 1 and Abdelrahman M. El-Akhdar 1
1
The Egyptian Technical Research and Development Centre, Elsayeda Aisha, Cairo, 11618, Egypt
emails: ahmed.alieldin@alexu.edu.eg, elagamy_a@yahoo.com, mohamedlmowagy46@gmail.com a.m.el-akhdar@ieee.org
Abstract— This paper proposes a design of a dual circularly
polarized antenna for radar-warning receivers. The antenna has
an omnidirectional radiation pattern to emphasize a 360°
coverage to detect threatening radar signals from all possible
directions. The antenna works across the L-band and covers the
frequency band from 1.2 to 1.4 GHz with VSWR ≤ 1.5 for
industrial standard. The proposed antenna consists of two
sections, radiators and a feeding network. The radiators are two
crossed orthogonal dipoles printed on opposite sides of an FR-4
laminate while the feeding network is an equal quad phase-shift
T-junction. The radiators and the feeding network are linked by
two coaxial cables. The antenna has a sable gain of 2.25 dBic and
an axial ratio bandwidth of 0.2 GHz. Also, being of small size,
low profile and lightweight makes the proposed design an
excellent candidate for radar-warning receiver systems.
Index Terms— Circularly-polarized, dual-polarization,
feeding network, omnidirectional, radar-warning receiver.
I. INTRODUCTION
Radar-warning receiver (RWR) systems detect the radio
signals emitted by radars. They aim to give an alert when a
threatening radar signal is detected such as the signals emitted
by a police traffic control radar, anti-aircraft missiles guided
by radars or submarine and ground station radars. This alert is
used manually or automatically to avoid detection [1]. RWR
can be installed in all kind of air vehicles, ships, submarines,
ground vehicles and automobiles and ground stations.
Antenna plays an essential role in the RWR systems. The
incident waves emitted by the threatening radars are partially
unknown in terms of their directions, frequencies and/or
polarizations. So, the antenna of an RWR system should
maintain broadband, uniform omnidirectional coverage and a
dual circularly polarization (CP) so that it is able to capture
different signals of different polarizations. This concept has
been widely applied to wireless energy harvesting systems [2].
Many attempts have been done to achieve these
requirements. In [3], a dual CP antenna was presented but its
narrow bandwidth limits its application in an RWR system.
The antenna bandwidth has been improved in [4] at the
expense of the antenna profile. The proposed antenna in [4]
has a cylindrical shape while normally antennas in RWR
systems are compact with a low profile.
A dual CP antenna with broadband has been successfully
achieved and proposed in [5] using series-fed arrays based on
sequential rotation technique. The only drawback, in this case,
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is that the presented design has a directive radiation pattern as
it utilizes the antenna array technique.
Another attempt to achieve a low-profile dual CP antenna
has been illustrated in [6] using a multilayer structure.
Unfortunately, in addition to the complicated structure of the
work presented in [6], the antenna achieves a return loss of 10
dB (VSWR = 2) across the operating frequency band which is
not enough for the industrial applications (typically VSWR <
1.5).
In this paper, a broadband dual CP omnidirectional
antenna is proposed to be utilized in RWR systems. The
antenna consists of two main parts: radiators and a feeding
network.
The radiators are oval-shaped crossed orthogonal dipoles
printed on an FR-4 laminate. Their oval shape permits the
dipoles to cover a broad frequency band [7]. Moreover, being
orthogonal, each dipole radiates a linear polarized wave with
a high polarization purity.
The feeding network is a T-divider with an equal power
division ratio and quad phase-shift outputs. The feeding
network is also printed on the same laminate for uniformity.
The two parts of the antenna (radiators and feeding network)
are connected by 50Ω coaxial cables.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows: Section II
explains the design, principles of operation and initial results
of the radiators, Section III illustrates the feeding network
design and its tested results, Section IV discusses the overall
antenna structure by integrating the radiators and the feeding
network in a single structure, it also presents and illustrates the
simulated results of the whole antenna structure. Finally,
conclusions are drawn in Section V emphasizing the
achievements of this research and future work directions.
II. RADIATORS DESIGN
Fig. 1 shows the proposed radiators which can be
described as two orthogonal crossed half-wavelength dipoles.
Each dipole has two oval-shaped elements linked by a feeding
50Ω strip. The oval-shaped elements of each dipole are
printed on the opposite sides of an FR-4 laminate with a
thickness of 1.58 mm, a dielectric constant εr = 4.4 and a
tangential loss of 0.026. The substrate lies in the X-o-Z plane.
The major axes of the dipoles make angles of ±45° with
respect to the Z-axis respectively. The major and minor axes
of each oval (U and V respectively) are calculated as follows:

Fig. 1. The proposed radiators.
2U equals half of the wavelength at the highest frequency
within the frequency band (1.4 GHz) while 2C equals half of
the wavelength at the lowest frequency within the frequency
band (1.2 GHz) where C is half of the circumference of the
oval and linked to U and V by:
𝑈 2 𝑉 2
√ ( ) + ( ) (1)
𝐶=𝜋 2 2 network is printed on an FR-4 laminate with the same
2 thickness and electrical parameters as the one used for the
Each dipole is fed by a 50Ω coaxial cable where its inner
is connected to one oval-shaped element while its outer is
connected to the other oval-shaped element on the opposite
side through the feeding strip. The dimensions of the structure
are summarized (in mm) as: U = 48, V = 23, C = 60, S = 77.
The simulated scattering parameters (S-parameters) of the
proposed radiator are shown in Fig. 2. The dipoles have return
loss better than 15 dB (VSWR < 1.5) across the frequency
band 1.2-1.4 GHz. The coupling between the dipoles is less
than -25 dB.
Fig. 2. The simulated scattering parameters of the proposed radiator.
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III. FEEDING NETWORK DESIGN
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3. The proposed feeding network (a) top view (b) side view
The dipoles proposed in Section II are feed by a common
feeding network as shown in Fig. 3. To achieve CP, the two
dipoles should maintain equal magnitude with a quad phase-
shift feeding. Therefore, the feeding network is designed
based on a T-junction divider followed by a λg/4 phase-shift
transmission line (where λg is the guided wavelength at the
central frequency 1.3 GHz and equals to λ0/εr and λ0 is the free
space wavelength at the central frequency). The feeding
radiators. The feeding network has three ports (P1, P2 and P3)
with 50Ω impedance each. P1 is the common port connected
to a 50Ω feeding transmission line. The feeding transmission
line is linked to two identical λg/4 impedance transformer with
an impedance of 70.7Ω. One of these λg/4 impedance
transformers is connected to a 50Ω λg/4 phase-shift
transmission line to achieve a quad phase-shift between the
two arms. Finally, ports P2 and P3 are attached to the 50Ω
transmission lines. The other side of the laminate has a solid
copper ground plane. The dimensions of the proposed feeding
network (in mm) are expressed as: L = 92, W = 20, W1 = 3,
W2 = 1.8, Q = 31.
The return loss, insertion losses and insertion phases of the
proposed feeding network are shown in Fig. 4. It is evident
that the proposed feeding network has a return loss better than
18 dB (VSWR < 1.3) and stable insertion losses better than
0.6 dB across the frequency band. The insertion-phase
difference between ports P2 and P3 is almost constant across
the frequency band and around 90°. The stable insertion loss
and quad-phase difference grantee a stable CP radiation
pattern of the antenna.
It is worth noting that the slight difference between the
insertion losses of ports P2 and P3 is due to the asymmetry of
the structure of the T-divider. However, this small variation
does not have a significant effect on CP radiation. Moreover,
the length of the quad phase-shift transmission line (Q) plays
an essential role in adjusting the phase difference between the
two ports P2 and P3. So, it has to be adjusted carefully.

Fig. 4. The simulated scattering parameters of the feeding network.
IV. ANTENNA RESULTS
In this section, the whole antenna structure is proposed and
tested. The antenna system consists of integrating the radiators
presented in section II with the feeding network presented in
section III as shown in Fig. 5. The coaxial cables of the
radiators are connected to ports P2 and P3. Hence, the whole
antenna structure has a single port P1 which is to be connected
to the front end of an RWR system. The overall size of the
antenna structure is 100 mm × 92 mm × 1.58 mm.
Fig. 6 shows the surface current distributions along the two
dipoles when the whole antenna is fed from port P1 at 0°, 90°,
180° and 270° respectively. It is clear that the current changes
its direction and orientation every 90°. This emphasizes the
CP radiation which will be shown later on. It is worth noting
that by connecting P2 to dipole I while connecting P3 to
dipole II, a right-hand circular polarization is obtained at the
positive Y-axis direction and a left-hand circular polarization
is obtained at the negative Y-axis direction. If the connections
are reversed, the sense of rotation of the polarization at each
direction will be reversed as well.
Fig. 5. The whole antenna structure.
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(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Fig. 6. The current distributions along the dipoles at(a) 0° (b) 90°
(c) 180° (d) 270°
Fig. 7 shows the return loss of the whole antenna structure
(seen from port P1), the realized gain and the axial ratio (AR)
along the Y-axis across the frequency band. The return loss is
better than 15 dB. The antenna has an average stable gain of
2.25 dBic and the AR is less than 0.6 dB across the frequency
band far less than the general criteria of CP antennas (AR < 3
dB) [8].
The simulated overall radiation pattern of the proposed
antenna at the central frequency (1.3 GHz) is shown in Fig.
8(a) while the right-hand circular polarized (RHCP) and left-
hand circular polarized (LHCP) radiation patterns are shown
in Fig. 8(b) and (c) respectively. It is clear from Fig. 8(a) that
the antenna has a uniform 360° radiation pattern to receive all
possible threatening radar signals that may incident from
different angles. Moreover, Fig. 8(b) and (c) indicate how the
proposed antenna is capable of radiating dual circularly
polarized radiation patterns utilizing the different sense of
rotation of the polarization at the two opposite sides of the
antenna along the Y-axis. Also, they clarify the polarization
purity of the proposed antenna.
Fig. 7. The simulated return loss, gain and AR of the proposed antenna.
 for industrial standard. The antenna has a uniform 360°
coverage with good polarization purity.
Having such futures in addition to being able to receive
incident waves with all possible polarizations and from all
possible directions simultaneously makes the proposed
antenna suitable for RWR systems. The design is to be made
and tested. The results will be presented at the conference

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Fig. 8. The simulated radiation patterns of the proposed antenna (a) overall
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Oval-shaped Base Station Antennas for Mobile Systems,” IEEE
A dual circularly polarized omnidirectional antenna is International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation &
proposed for RWR systems. The antenna enjoys broadband, USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting, San Diego, CA, Jul,
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