SPHERICAL HELICAL ANTENNA WITH
For a
CIRCULAR POLARISATION OVER A BROAD
BEAM
J. C . Cardoso and A. Safaai-Jazi
Indexing terms Antennas, Polarisation, Antenna radiation
Datterns
A spherical helical antenna is proposed and its radiation
characteristics are analysed using numerical methods and
experimental measurements. Results for a 10 turn helix are
presented. These results indicate that the spherical helix can
provide circular polarisation over a wide heamwidth. The
radiation patterns have a broad main beam, essentially no
sidelohes. and low backlohe level.
Introduction; Helical antennas are of considerable interest
because they provide circular polarisation over a wide band-
width. The conventional cylindrical helix has been investi-
gated extensively in the past by many researchers, and
numerous modifications to the simple cylindrical geometry
have been proposed in the pursuit of increased bandwidth and
optimisation of other parameters [l-31. We report prelimi-
nary results of an investigation in a spherical helical antenna.
The spherical helix is a wire antenna in a helix shape that is
wound over a spherical surface as shown in Fig. 1. It is fed
coaxially with the inner conductor of the coaxial cable becom-
ing the helix and the outer conductor forming the conducting
ground plane.
Fig. 1 Spherical helical antenna over a ground plane fed by coaxial
cable
Unlike the cylindrical helix, spherical helical radiators have
not been widely investigated. One class of radiators known a s
spherical anisotropic antennas was studied about three
decades ago by Mei and Meyer [4]. These antennas are
assumed to have many turns so that they can be modelled as
anisotropically-conducting surfaces. Another type known as
the spherical spiral antenna was investigated by Atia and Mei
[SI. The spherical helix presented here has a limited number
of turns, thus most of the spherical surface is nonconducting.
Analysis of this structure requires numerical methods and
experimental measurements because its complex geometry
makes it very difficult to develop analytic expressions for its
radiation characteristics.
Geometry: The geometry of the spherical helix is defined such
that a constant spacing between successive turns is main-
tained. The advantage of fixed spacing is that the spherical
helix can be easily constructed and the mathematical expres-
sions that describe its geometry can be readily formulated,
thus facilitating experimental evaluation as well as computer
simulation of the helix. The equations that describe a spher-
ical helix with constant spacing are [6]
r = a
where a is the radius of the sphere, N is the total number of
(1)
turns, and r , 0, and 4 are the spherical co-ordinates The
spacing between successive turns as projected on the z-axis is
ELECTRONICS LE77TR.S 18th February 1993 Vol 29 N o 4
-- --
2 a / N . For a complete spherical helix 0 < 4 < 2nN.
truncated spherical helix eqns. 1 and 2 can be used with
0 i6 < 2nn, where n is the actual number of turns.
Analysis and results: The investigation of the spherical helix
was carried out using both numerical techniques and experi-
mental measurements. Attention is focused on a particular
helix which provides circular polarisation over a wide beam-
width. Although several cases were examined, results for a 10
turn spherical helix are presented here. The wire antenna code
ESP (electromagnetic surface patch code), based on the
method of moments, was used to numerically analyse the helix
[7]. Both the magnitude and phase of electric field com-
ponents E , and E , were calculated in the far-field region. Fig.
2 shows the gains G , and G , for a 10 turn helix with a circum-
ference C = 2na = 1.252, where 1 is the wavelength. The gain
Fig. 2 Calculated far-field patterns in xz-plane for I O turn spherical
helix with circumference 1.25).
of each component of the electric field is referenced to an
isotropic linearly-polarised antenna and is expressed as
go^, = 10logio(CoIE,.+l2) dB (3)
where COis a constant related to the radiation intensity of the
reference isotropic antenna [2]. The radiation patterns in Fig.
2 are in the xz-plane (4 = 0" and 180"). A square ground
plane with a side dimension larger than a half wavelength was
considered in the calculations of radiation characteristics. The
size of the ground plane whose smallest linear dimension
exceeds one half wavelength does not influence the results.
The total gain of the spherical helix with respect to a circular-
ly polarised isotropic antenna was also calculated. The gain is
- 9.5 dB in the axial direction 0 = 0".
Fig. 3 illustrates the phase difference between the field com-
ponents, L E , - LE,, against 0. In this Figure, positive values
of 8 correspond to 4 = On, and the negative values are for
4 = 180". Examination of Figs. 2 and 3 clearly indicates that
250, ,
pol
1
D
i
E
2 90 U
I"i__,
a -30
-70
- 9 0 - 7 5 - 6 0 - 4 5 -30-15 0 15
e ,deg
30 45 60 75 90
1825131
Fig. 3 Calculated phase difference between electric field components E ,
and E ,
325
 for -45” i0 < 45”, the field components E, and E, have
equal magnitude and 90” phase difference, indicating that the
polarisation is circular. What is remarkable is that circular
polarisation is maintained over a wide beamwidth. The con-
ventional helix does not maintain circular polarisation in off-
axis directions, a drawback which has motivated researchers
to find ways of improving it [SI. The limitation with this
antenna, however, is that circular polarisation over a wide
beam is maintained over a relatively narrow bandwidth.
Results indicated that for a spherical helix the size of a ping
pong ball, the bandwidth is -50MHz. In some applications
such as mobile radio communications where high channel
capacity may not be required, wide beamwidth, circular pol-
arisation, and compact size are important advantages offered
by the spherical helix.
A prototype 10 turn spherical helix, 0.06111 in diameter and
backed by a conducting dish 0.15m in diameter, was built and
tested. Fig. 4 shows the measured far-field patterns. The
Fig. 4 Measured far-field patterns of IO turn spherical helix with cir-
cumference 1.251
lEel ldBl
. . . . . . . I E+ I CdBl
~
maximum of the E, pattern is normalised to OdB and E, is
normalised relative to E,. The measured patterns of the two
-
components differ from each other by 2 dB and mimic each
other almost exactly in the upper half plane. Experimental
errors (interference, reflections, gain fluctuations, etc.) may
have contributed to the difference between the components
which are equal in the calculated patterns of Fig. 2. The
antenna range facility available did not provide the capability
for phase measurements.
Conclusion: A spherical helical antenna has been proposed
and investigated. The proposed antenna is compact and pro-
vides circular polarisation over a wide beamwidth. This broad
beam circularly polarised antenna has potential applications
in communication systems with low channel capacity.
28 October 1992
J. C. Cardoso and A. Safaai-Jazi (The Bradley Department of Electri-
cal Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
Blacksburg, Virginia 240610111, U S A )
References
1 KRAUS,I. D.:‘Antennas’ (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1988), 2nd edn.
2 STUTZMAN, w. L., and THIELE, G . A.: ‘Antenna theory and design’
(John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981)
3 NAKANO, H.: ‘Helical and spiral antennas-a numerical approach’
(Research Studies Press, New York, 1987)
4 MEI,K. K., and M E W , M.: ‘Solutions lo spherical anisotropic
antennas’, IEEE Trans., 1969, AP-12, pp. 459-463
5 AnA, and mi, K. K.: ‘Charactenstics of a spherical spiral satellite
antenna’. Program and Abstracts of the URSI Meeting, 1969, pp.
67-68
6 CARWSO, I. c.: ‘The spherical helical antenna’. MS Thesis, Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992, Chap. 3
326
-
-
7 NEWMAN, E. H.,and DILSAVAR, R. L.: ‘A user’s manual for the elec-
tromagnetic surface patch code’. ESP Version 111, The Ohio State
University, ElectroScience Laboratory, NASA Technical Report
No. 716148-19, 1987
8 KIUFT, U. R., and MoNtCH, G.: ‘Main-beam polarization properties
of the axial mode helix antenna’, IEEE Trans., 1990, AP-38, pp.
589-592
SIMPLE AND LOW-LOSS FIBRE-TO-CHIP
COUPLING BY INTEGRATED
FIELD-MATCHING WAVEGUIDE I N InP
Th. Schwander, S. Fischer, A. Kramer, M. Laich,
K. Luksic, G. Spatschek and M. W a r t h
Indexing terms: Optical couplers, Integrated optics, Optical
waveguides
A nested taper structure in InCaAsP/lnP, using only hori-
zontally tapered waveguides, trnasforms the fundamental
mode of an integrated waveguide to the mode profile of a
singlemode fibre. Taper tips below 300nm width have been
achieved with standard technology. Very first measurement
results show an insertion loss of only 4dB lor a 1mm long
device without any antireflectivecoating or immersion fluid.
Introduction; Fibre-to-chip coupling between optical trans-
mission fibres and planar optical waveguides of semicon-
ductor lasers or optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs) is
still one of the most important cost factors. Simple butt joints
between fibres and InGaAsP/InP waveguides only have poor
efliciencies, whereas microlenses and fibre tapers are dificult
to mount and require costly alignment procedures. To obtain
a cheap but eflicient connection, we integrate the complex
field matching area, which transforms the strongly guided fun-
damental mode of an OEIC system waveguide to the mode
profile of the weakly guiding fibre, on a mass-producible
OEIC. In Fig. 1 an optical front end for wavelength division
are0 of
optoelectronic components
field matching
section
singlemode fibre terminol
I
p
J
i
Fig. 1 OEIC with field-matching waveguide for integrated subscriber
terminals
multiplexing application is shown, containing the field-
matching section, a wavelength division multiplexer [l] and a
laser- and detector diode, coupled to system waveguides Low-
cost fabrication with high yield requires the use of standard
technology with high reproduability Therefore we d o not use
vertically tapered waveguides [2] The device should not pri-
marily be applicable to laser-fibre coupling [3] but also to
passive fibre-OEIC coupling over the entire 1 3-1 55pm
wavelength range.
Design At the OEIC-fibre interface, a weakly guiding wave-
guide is designed [4] as an InP homostructure waveguide
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 18th February 1993 Vol 2 9 No 4