A circularly polarized slot antenna for high gain applications

A coplanar waveguide fed slot antenna for wideband circular polarization is designed and experimentally validated. The rectangular slot is excited using a stepped feed line terminated on a circular disc shaped tuning stub. To obtain circular polarization, inverted L-shaped strips are attached to the ground plane at the opposite corners while a rectangular slit is cut in the circular disc. The combined bandwidth (3-dB axial ratio and 10 dB impedance matching) achieved is 48% (4.35–7.1 GHz) under simulation and 40% (4.75–7.1 GHz) in measurement. The gain of the antenna is next enhanced by the application of a double layered square loop frequency selective surface. The frequency selective surface is used as a reflector placed beneath the antenna at an optimum distance. An improvement of about 4 dB is seen in the measured peak gain over most of the operating band. Experimental results are presented to characterize the antenna and the frequency selective surface and they are found to be in good agreement with the simulated results.