A Wideband Series-Fed Circularly Polarized Differential Antenna by Using Crossed Open Slot-Pairs

A novel method of designing a wideband series-fed circularly polarized (CP) differential antenna by using crossed open slot-pairs is presented in this paper. The near-field distributions and input impedance analyses show that the closely spaced open slot-pairs can radiate as the crossed dipoles and have stable radiating resistance with a compact radiator size. Besides, a wideband half-power phase shifter by using open slot is proposed and utilized to realize CP radiation. The proposed CP antenna is composed of a wide slot-pair and a narrow slot-pair. In the antenna design, the narrow slot-pair is not only excited as a radiator, but also elaborately loaded to provide wideband half-power output and quadrature phase excitation to the wide slot-pair. Both the proposed half-power phase shifter and CP antenna are illustrated by the corresponding equivalent circuits. Based on these analyses, the proposed antenna is designed, fabricated and measured. Compared to the simulated traditionally designed counterpart, 2.1 times wider axial ratio bandwidth is achieved for the proposed antenna. The measured overlapped bandwidth for axial ratio <3 dB and return loss >10 dB is 1.95-3.45 GHz (55.6%). Also, the antenna gain and radiation patterns are measured, which agree well with the simulated results.