IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

14, 2015 559

Broadband Circularly Polarized Patch Antenna With

Parasitic Strips
Jianjun Wu, Yingzeng Yin, Zedong Wang, and Ruina Lian

Abstract—A patch antenna with parasitic strips is presented for

wideband circular polarization. In order to broaden the axial-ratio
(AR) bandwidth of the original corner-truncated patch, four par-
asitic strips are sequentially rotated and gap-coupled around the
patch. A capacitive-coupled feed with a small disc on the top of
the feeding probe is utilized to obtain a wide impedance-matching
bandwidth. Moreover, another disc-loaded shorting pin is placed at
the center of the antenna to adjust the squint beams and improve
the gains along -axis. Measured results show that the proposed
antenna with a low profile of obtains a global bandwidth
of 24% (2.32–2.95 GHz) for dB, dB, and
average gain of 8 dBic.
Index Terms—Circular polarization, enhanced radiation, para-
sitic elements, wideband antenna. Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna. Dimensions are , ,
, , , , , , , ,
, and (unit: millimeters).
I. INTRODUCTION

achieves a wide 3-dB AR bandwidth of 16%. However, this an-

C IRCULARLY polarized (CP) antennas have received in-

creasing attention in wireless communication systems be-
cause they can reduce multipath reflections and allow flexible
orientations between the transmitter and receiver antennas. Gen-
erally, for the single-fed CP microstrip antennas, circular polar-
ization can be obtained by truncating patch corners [1] or cutting
diagonal slots in the patch [2]. However, these antennas usually
suffer from narrow axial-ratio (AR) bandwidth. AR bandwidth
can be enhanced when thick substrates or air layers are used.
Techniques of U-slot and L-probe are often adopted to match
impedance [3]. In [4], 3-dB AR bandwidth of 6.4% is obtained
on an air layer of is the wavelength corresponding
to the center operating frequency . Additionally, a circular disc
is mounted on the top of the feeding probe to compensate the
long probe inductance. Another common method to improve
AR bandwidth is the addition of parasitic elements that intro-
duce new minimum AR points [5]–[7]. In [6], a antenna
array consisting of one corner-truncated patch as the driven an-
tenna and eight gap-coupled square patches as the parasitic ele-
ments has a 3-dB AR bandwidth of 3.3%. A microstrip antenna
with capacitive-coupled feeds and coplanar parasitic rings [7]
Manuscript received August 30, 2014; revised October 22, 2014; accepted
November 19, 2014. Date of publication November 20, 2014; date of current
version February 06, 2015.
The authors are with the Science and Technology on Antennas and
Microwave Laboratory, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail:
jun542391752@126.com; yzyin@mail.xidian.edu.cn; zedongwang1989@163.
com; rnlian@163.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2373823
tenna employs an extra feeding network. Furthermore, the an-
tenna arrays with the sequential rotation technique perform re-
markable CP bandwidths [8]–[10]. In the CP cross dipole an-
tenna in [11], a new additional AR minimum point is generated
by four sequentially rotated parasitic loops. Sequentially rotated
strips are connected to the cross dipole in [12], and a 3-dB AR
bandwidth of 23% (2.3–2.9 GHz) is achieved with a profile of
.
In this letter, a broadband CP single-fed patch antenna is pre-
sented. Four sequentially rotated rectangular strips are gap-cou-
pled to the conventional corner-truncated patch antenna. Wide
AR band with two minimum AR points is achieved for the patch
with parasitic elements. A capacitive-coupled feeding structure
is utilized for impedance matching, and another proximity-cou-
pled shorting pin for radiation patterns tuning. Results show
that the proposed antenna has a 3-dB AR bandwidth of 24%
(2.32–2.95 GHz) with a low profile of . The profile of our
proposed antenna is the same as that of the antenna in [7]. How-
ever, our design achieves a larger CP bandwidth with a simple
feed structure. Also, compared to the design in [12], this antenna
has a similar AR bandwidth but a much lower profile. The char-
acteristics of the wideband CP antenna are studied by simula-
tions and experiments in the next sections.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the proposed antenna. The
main patch is a square patch with a length of and truncation of
. Four parasitic strips with sizes of are sequentially
rotated around the main patch with a distance from the patch
side and from the substrate edge. Both the main patch and
the coupled elements are printed on the top layer of a PTFE

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 560 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 14, 2015

Fig. 2. Simulated and AR of the single patch and the patch with parasitic
strips.

substrate with length of , thickness of , relative permittivity of

2.55, and dielectric loss tangent of 0.002. A thick air layer with
height is employed between the substrate and the ground. The
feed probe is located at -axis, and a shorting pin connecting
the ground is below the center of the main patch. Discs with radii
of and that are printed on the bottom layer of the substrate
Fig. 3. Current distributions on the patch and parasitic strips at (a) 2.4 and
are on the top of the two probes. The radii of the feed probe and (b) 2.8 GHz.
shorting pin are both 0.65 mm. The optimized parameters in the
caption of Fig. 1 and the simulated results are obtained with the
aid of ANSYS HFSS 15 software.

A. Patch With Parasitic Strips

The dimensions of the original single-fed patch antenna are
, , , , and other parameters are
the same as the proposed antenna. The capacitance between the
patch and the disc can compensate the inductance of the long
feed probe, and good impedance matching is achieved conse-
quently. The simulated and AR results of the original patch
in Fig. 2 indicate that this antenna has a 3-dB AR band of 9.9%
(2.5–2.76 GHz) within a wide effective impedance matching
band. Fig. 2 also depicts the results of the patch with parasitic
strips but without the shorting pin. Two minimum points can be
seen in the AR curve, and the 3-dB AR band is from 2.33 to
2.89 GHz. The CP bandwidth of the original single patch is en-
hanced greatly after the parasitic strips are inserted.
To investigate the generation of the two minimum AR points,
we examine the current distributions on the patch and strips with
a period at 2.4 and 2.8 GHz, shown in Fig. 3. In the lower fre- Fig. 4. Effects of parameters on the AR performance: (a) , (b) , and (c) ,
quency 2.4 GHz, most of the currents concentrate on the shorter and (d) the definition of rotation angle .
diagonal of the patch and upper and right strips at . The
equivalent current direction is along . Meanwhile,
the currents concentrate on the longer diagonal of the patch, and while the one at higher frequency is more influenced by the in-
the direction is along at . The directions serting strips.
of currents at and are opposite to those at The longer diagonal of the main patch is about a half-wave-
and . Then, the currents rotate counterclockwise length of the AR minimum point with lower frequency, while
to yield right-hand circular polarization (RHCP) waves in the the length of the strips is about a half-wavelength of the AR
boresight direction. The current distributions at in higher minimum point with higher frequency. Fig. 4 shows the effects
frequency 2.8 GHz are similar to those at 2.4 GHz. However, of the key parameters , , and on AR. By increasing
most of the currents are on the strips at , which are , the first minimum AR point moves to lower frequency. Dif-
different from those in 2.4 GHz. We can conclude that the two ferent results in the movements of the two minimum points,
AR minimum points are determined by the patch and the para- and has a fiercer effect on the second one. The four parasitic
sitic strips simultaneously since the energy on the strips is still strips are coupled from the main patch with sequential phases.
gap-coupled from the main patch. However, the main patch has Smaller corresponding to larger rotation of the strip from the
a stronger effect on the AR minimum points at lower frequency, patch center in Fig. 4(d) results in a smaller value of the second

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 WU et al.: BROADBAND CP PATCH ANTENNA WITH PARASITIC STRIPS
Fig. 5. Different feed structures: (a) single feed, (b) differential feed, and
(c) proposed feed.
Fig. 6. Gain performances with (a) different ground sizes and (b) different feed
structures.
AR minimum point. When the strips are placed at the center
of the patch edge ( and ), the second AR
minimum point is disappeared. It further demonstrates that the
rotation angle has a reasonable influence on the second AR
minimum point.
B. Feed Structure to Improve Radiation Patterns
From the current distributions shown in Fig. 3, we can see
that the currents are nonuniform on the strips. The currents on
the right and upper strips are extremely strong since the feed
point is located at -axis. The right strip, like the directors
in a Yagi–Uda antenna, has a directing effect on the radiation
patterns and leads to a beam tilt. The antennas with differen-
tial feeds have symmetric radiation patterns, and there exists a
virtual ac ground line between the two feeds with phase
difference [13], shown in Fig. 5. However, an extra feed net-
work is needed to generate differential signals. In order to tune
the radiation patterns with the idea of differential feeds and sim-
plify the feed structure, we place a shorting pin at the center of
the antenna to imitate the virtual ac ground line. From the sim-
ulated procedure, we find that a disc-loaded shorting pin has a
more obvious effect on radiation patterns improvement than a
shorting pin connecting the patch and ground directly. More-
over, different feed structures have slight influences on antenna
AR. Fig. 6 shows simulated gain in -axis for the antenna
with different ground sizes and three feed mechanisms. For the
single-feed antenna, larger ground size brings a boresight gain
enhancement, especially at higher frequencies. In addition, the
proposed feeding structure has an average gain enhancement
of 1 dBic in -axis compared to the patch with single feed.
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561
Fig. 7. Radiation patterns of antennas with different feed structures at 2.6 GHz.
Fig. 8. Photograph of the fabricated CP antenna.
Fig. 7 shows the simulated radiation patterns at 2.6 GHz for an-
tennas with different feed structure. The single-fed antenna has
a beam tilt of in the -plane and in the -plane.
The differential-fed antenna has symmetric radiation patterns
in both planes. The antenna with proposed feeding structure has
beam tilts of and . All in all, our feed structure is simple
and can be used to improve the radiation patterns.
To give detailed design principles of the proposed wide-
band CP antenna, simple design guidelines are summarized as
follows.
1) The dimensions of the main patch and the length of the
coupled strips correspond to the two minimum AR points.
Wide AR bandwidth can be obtained when the two mini-
mums are close.
2) The corner truncation and the rotation of the parasitic
strips determine the polarization sense of the radiating
waves. The antenna can yield left-hand circular polariza-
tion (LHCP) when the truncation is opposite to that in
Fig. 1 and the rotation angle value is negative.
3) The proximity-coupled shorting pin is placed below the
center of the main patch to improve the radiation patterns.
4) The position of the capacitive coupled feed and the radius
of the top-loaded disc are tuned to match impedance after
a good CP performance is achieved.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
To validate the design strategy, a prototype of the pro-
posed antenna was fabricated, as shown in Fig. 8. Two plastic
posts are installed near the truncation to fix the substrate
above the ground. The was measured using the Agilent
N5062A vector network analyzer, and radiation characteristics
were measured in an anechoic chamber with Satimo system.
Fig. 9 shows the simulated and measured , AR, and
 562
Fig. 9. Simulated and measured results of the proposed antenna: (a)
AR and (b) gain.
Fig. 10. Simulated and measured normalized radiation patterns of the proposed
antenna at (a) 2.4, (b) 2.6, and (c) 2.8 GHz.
gain along -axis of the proposed antenna. The measured
bandwidth for dB is 49.8% (1.87–3.11 GHz), and
measured 3-dB AR bandwidth is 24% (2.32–2.95 GHz). The
measured results are in good agreements with the simulations
except for some discrepancies, which may be due to fabrication
errors. The proposed antenna shows an average gain of 8 dBic,
and gain is improved by about 1 dBic compared to the single
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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 14, 2015
patch without parasitic strips. The simulated and measured
normalized radiation patterns at 2.4, 2.6, and 2.8 GHz for the
proposed antenna are presented in Fig. 10. Measured results
show that this antenna has a beam tilt of in the -plane
and in the -plane at 2.4 GHz, and at 2.6 GHz,
and and at 2.8 GHz. The pattern improvement of
the shorting pin is more obvious in the -plane and at low
frequencies.
and
IV. CONCLUSION
A broadband CP antenna with sequentially rotated parasitic
strips is investigated in this letter. By simply using capaci-
tive-coupled feed and parasitic elements, the proposed antenna
exhibits considerable impedance bandwidth of 49.8% for
dB and 3-dB AR bandwidth of 24%. Additionally,
a shorting pin at the center is utilized to improve the squint
radiation patterns, and a gain enhancement of 1 dBic along
-axis can be observed. Due to the advantages of low profile,
wide CP bandwidth, and high gain, the proposed antenna is a
good candidate for broadband CP applications.
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