Circularly-Polarized Wide Slot Antenna Loaded With a Parasitic Patch

A design is described of a broadband circularly-polarized (CP) slot antenna. A conventional annular-ring slot antenna is first analyzed, and it is found that two adjacent CP modes can be simultaneously excited through the proximity coupling of an L-shaped feed line. By tuning the dimensions of this L-shaped feed line, the two CP modes can be coupled together and a broad CP bandwidth is thus formed. The design method is also valid when the inner circular patch of the annular-ring slot antenna is vertically raised from the ground plane. In this case, the original band-limited ring slot antenna is converted into a wide-band structure that is composed of a circular wide slot and a parasitic patch, and consequently the CP bandwidth is further enhanced. For the patch-loaded wide slot antenna, its key parameters are investigated to show how to couple the two CP modes and achieve impedance matching. The effects of the distance between the parasitic patch and wide slot on the CP bandwidth and antenna gain are also presented and discussed in details.