A Circularly Polarized Spiral/Loop Antenna and Its Simple Feeding Mechanism

In this chapter, a simple spiral/loop antenna radiating circular polarization is introduced. Circularly polarized antennas are complex structures in general because they are constituted by two or more antennas in multilayer structures or employ phase-shifting circuits. For this reason, the circularly polarized antennas are too complex to be applied to mobile communication devices such as radiofrequency identifier (RFID) and global positioning system (GPS) handy terminals. Simpler and easier circularly polarized antennas are necessary for these devices. The presented circularly polarized antenna is so simple that it is printable, and it has only one port that can be fed through a coaxial cable directly. In the first section, the necessity of the circularly polarized antennas for modern antenna systems is explained. Then, the historical conventional antennas are introduced by referring to important publications. In the second section, the novel simple circularly polarized antenna invented by the author will be presented. The basic structure of the presented antenna and its principle will be explained. In the third section, a feeding mechanism to feed the presented antenna through a coaxial cable will be presented. In conclusion, detailed characteristics of the presented antennas will be summarized

Advanced Circularly Polarised Microstrip Patch Antennas

The thesis describes outcomes of research on advanced circularly polarised antennas. The proposed designs are intended for integration into small mobile devices, therefore low profile and easy manufacturability are key parameters, along with good CP radiation properties. The designs were validated by simulation and measurement, and are also backed by theory and design guidelines. The primary focus is on the development of planar omnidirectional circularly polarised antennas, which are fabricated using multilayer PCB techniques and thus are lightweight and cost-efficient. Unlike in classical microstrip patch antenna designs, the groundplane of the proposed antenna was substantially reduced. This helps to achieve an omnidirectional circular polarisation pattern and miniaturize the antenna, however at the cost of increased feed circuit complexity. The basic design, its advantages and disadvantages are discussed in Section 3. In the next step, the omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna was extended with additional, advanced features. A miniaturized version is investigated, which offers a 20% footprint reduction by folding parts of the patch underneath itself. Further miniaturization is possible by increasing the dielectric constant of the substrate. A method to adjust the omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna performance by trimming four lumped capacitors is also investigated. Manufacturing inaccuracy in large scale production may cause some of the units to radiate outside of the desired frequencies. By integrating four trimmed capacitors into the antenna it can be precisely tuned to the desired band. Simulated results demonstrate this property by trimming the antenna between GPS L1 band (centre frequency at 1.575 GHz) and Galileo/Beidou-2 E2 band (1.561 GHz). Furthermore, a dual-band omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna is presented, which employs slots and capacitor loading to steer the current path of the first and second resonant mode. The design offers a small frequency ratio of 1.182. The methods to obtain a planar omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna have been further advanced to propose a reconfigurable antenna. The beam reconfiguration is capable of rotating it dipole-like radiation pattern around an axis, thus allowing reception or transmission from any spherical angle. The switching method is simple and does not require any semiconductor devices. Finally, a dual circularly polarised antenna is presented, which achieves dual-polarisation by employing even and odd modes in a coplanar waveguide. This technique allows greater flexibility and size reduction of the feed network, as two signals can be transmitted by a single multi-mode transmission line. Simulated results demonstrate this property by trimming the antenna between GPS L1 band (centre frequency at 1.575 GHz) and Galileo/Beidou-2 E2 band (1.561 GHz). Furthermore, a dual-band omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna is presented, which employs slots and capacitor loading to steer the current path of the first and second resonant mode. The design offers a small frequency ratio of 1.182. The methods to obtain a planar omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna have been further advanced to propose a reconfigurable antenna. The beam reconfiguration is capable of rotating it dipole-like radiation pattern around an axis, thus allowing reception or transmission from any spherical angle. The switching method is simple and does not require any semiconductor devices. Finally, a dual circularly polarised antenna is presented, which achieves dual-polarisation by employing even and odd modes in a coplanar waveguide. This technique allows greater flexibility and size reduction of the feed network, as two signals can be transmitted by a single multi-mode transmission line

Radar Sub-surface Sensing for Mapping the Extent of Hydraulic Fractures and for Monitoring Lake Ice and Design of Some Novel Antennas.

Hydraulic fracturing, which is a fast-developing well-stimulation technique, has greatly expanded oil and natural gas production in the United States. As the use of hydraulic fracturing has grown, concerns about its environmental impacts have also increased. A sub-surface imaging radar that can detect the extent of hydraulic fractures is highly demanded, but existing radar designs cannot meet the requirement of penetration range on the order of kilometers due to the exorbitant propagation loss in the ground. In the thesis, a medium frequency (MF) band sub-surface radar sensing system is proposed to extend the detectable range to kilometers in rock layers. Algorithms for cross-hole and single-hole configurations are developed based on simulations using point targets and realistic fractured rock models. A super-miniaturized borehole antenna and its feeding network are also designed for this radar system. Also application of imaging radars for sub-surface sensing frozen lakes at Arctic regions is investigated. The scattering mechanism is the key point to understand the radar data and to extract useful information. To explore this topic, a full-wave simulation model to analyze lake ice scattering phenomenology that includes columnar air bubbles is presented. Based on this model, the scattering mechanism from the rough ice/water interface and columnar air bubbles in the ice at C band is addressed and concludes that the roughness at the interface between ice and water is the dominate contributor to backscatter and once the lake is completely frozen the backscatter diminishes significantly. Radar remote sensing systems often require high-performance antennas with special specifications. Besides the borehole antenna for MF band subsurface imaging system, several other antennas are also designed for potential radar systems. Surface-to-borehole setup is an alternative configuration for subsurface imaging system, which requires a miniaturized planar antenna placed on the surface. Such antenna is developed with using artificial electromagnetic materials for size reduction. Furthermore, circularly polarized (CP) waveform can be used for imaging system and omnidirectional CP antenna is needed. Thus, a low-profile planar azimuthal omnidirectional CP antenna with gain of 1dB and bandwidth of 40MHz is designed at 2.4GHz by combining a novel slot antenna and a PIFA antenna.PhDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120674/1/wujf_1.pd

Structural Architectures for a Deployable Wideband UHF Antenna

This paper explores concepts for a wideband deployable antenna suitable for small satellites. The general approach taken was to closely couple antenna theory and structural mechanics, to produce a deployable antenna that is considered efficient in both fields. Approaches that can be deployed using stored elastic strain energy have been favored over those that require powered actuators or environmental effects to enforce deployment. Two types of concepts were developed: thin shell structure and pantograph. These concepts cover four antenna topologies: crossed log periodic, conical log spiral, helical and quadrifilar helix. Of these, the conical log spiral antenna and the accompanying deployment concepts are determined to be the most promising approaches that warrant further study

2009 Index IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters Vol. 8

This index covers all technical items - papers, correspondence, reviews, etc. - that appeared in this periodical during the year, and items from previous years that were commented upon or corrected in this year. Departments and other items may also be covered if they have been judged to have archival value. The Author Index contains the primary entry for each item, listed under the first author\u27s name. The primary entry includes the coauthors\u27 names, the title of the paper or other item, and its location, specified by the publication abbreviation, year, month, and inclusive pagination. The Subject Index contains entries describing the item under all appropriate subject headings, plus the first author\u27s name, the publication abbreviation, month, and year, and inclusive pages. Note that the item title is found only under the primary entry in the Author Index

2008 Index IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Vol. 16

This index covers all technical items - papers, correspondence, reviews, etc. - that appeared in this periodical during the year, and items from previous years that were commented upon or corrected in this year. Departments and other items may also be covered if they have been judged to have archival value. The Author Index contains the primary entry for each item, listed under the first author\u27s name. The primary entry includes the coauthors\u27 names, the title of the paper or other item, and its location, specified by the publication abbreviation, year, month, and inclusive pagination. The Subject Index contains entries describing the item under all appropriate subject headings, plus the first author\u27s name, the publication abbreviation, month, and year, and inclusive pages. Note that the item title is found only under the primary entry in the Author Index

Microstrip patch antenna array with cosecant-squared radiation pattern profile

In this paper the radiation pattern on either side of the main beam, which is created by a standard microstrip patch antenna, is configured to correspond to a cosecant-squared curve. The 8×2 antenna array comprises eight pairs of radiating elements that are arranged in a symmetrical structure and excited through a single common feedline. Interaction of the fields generated by each pair of elements contribute towards the overall radiation characteristics. The proposed array is shown to exhibit an impedance bandwidth of 1.93 GHz from 9.97 to 11.90 GHz for S11 ≤ -10 dB with a peak gain of 14.95 dBi. The antenna’s radiation pattern follows a cosecant-squared curve over an angular range of ±60.91°. The compact antenna array has dimensions of 106×34×0.813 mm3. These characteristics qualify the antenna for radar applications at the X-band frequency

A Study on Conformal Antenna Solutions for Cube Satellites

This master\u27s thesis presents a study on a slot and microstrip patch as the two main types of antennas for the use on Cube Satellite (CubeSat). A study on the fundamentals of the slot antenna is researched and a circularly polarized (CPd) cavity-backed cross slot antenna and its two-element array for the CubeSat are designed and fabricated. Fabricated two-element phased array cross slot antenna has higher radiation gain and steered radiation pattern compared to the fabricated single cross slot antenna. A CPd square microstrip patch antenna for the application of the CubeSat is designed and compared with a commercial CPd microstrip patch antenna. It is concluded that our designed microstrip patch antenna has a better performance compared to the commercial one. The last part of the research focuses on the design of miniaturized slot antennas for the CubeSat working at an ultra high frequency (UHF) band. The different techniques and challenges that we face through the miniaturization are articulated throughout the research and expanded upon in this thesis. The antenna simulations were performed using Ansoft High Frequency System Simula- tor (HFSS) and the final designs for the CPd cavity-backed single and two-element cross slot antennas and CPd microstrip patch antenna were fabricated using a circuit board milling machine. These were then measured inside an anechoic chamber for the radiation pattern. Both antennas had high radiation gain and good CPd radiation quality

Wideband Circularly Polarized Elements and Arrays for Wireless Systems

Circularly polarized (CP) antennas have received increasing interest during recent decades due to their unique features such as the mitigation of multi-path fading, reduction of the "Faraday rotation" effect when signals propagate through the ionosphere and immunity of the polarization mismatching between transmitting and receiving antennas. Due to the requirements of high date rate and large system capacity, CP antennas deployed in various wireless systems are always demanded to have wide bandwidth. Furthermore, other system requirements such as polarization diversity, wide-angle beam scanning and low power consumption impose additional requirements to CP antennas. Therefore, it is becoming a more stringent requirement to design wideband CP antennas with diverse features to fulfil the requirements of various wireless systems. In this thesis, six different types of wideband CP antenna elements and arrays are designed, fabricated and characterized to meet the different demands of wireless systems. Chapters 3-5 investigate three different types of wideband CP antenna elements while Chapters 6-8 investigate three different kinds of wideband CP array antennas. In Chapter 3, an ultra-wideband CP element with a bandwidth of 100% (3:1) is proposed. It over-comes the problem of limited 3 dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth for single-feed CP antennas and achieves high front-to-back ratio (FBR) by using a novel ground plane with simple configuration, which makes it a good candidate for high-performance Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers. Chapter 4 presents a wideband loop antenna with electronically switchable circular polarizations. It solves the issue of narrow overlapped bandwidth under different polarization states for a polarization reconfigurable CP antenna. Because of the available orthogonal polarizations across a wide bandwidth, this antenna can be deployed in wireless communications which implement polarization diversity. The third antenna element investigated in Chapter 5 tackles the difficulty of designing wide-band wide AR beamwidth CP antennas. It achieves wide AR beamwidth within a 42% bandwidth, which is suitable for wideband wide-angle CP beam-scanning applications. The second main part of this thesis focuses on the investigation of wideband CP arrays. In Chapter 6, a dual-CP beam-scanning array is investigated, which can scan its beam independently in right-hand circular polarization (RHCP) and left-hand polarization (LHCP) from 27 GHz to 30 GHz. It tackles the problem of low isolation between the two orthogonally polarized ports across a wide bandwidth at Ka-band. A single-layer high-efficiency CP reflectarray is proposed in the following Chapter. The proposed design solves the issues of bandwidth limitation and low aperture efficiency for single-layer CP reflectarrays. It achieves the widest bandwidth compared with other CP reflectarrays reported in terms of 3 dB AR bandwidth, 3 dB gain bandwidth, larger than 50% aperture efficiency and undistorted radiation pattern bandwidth. In Chapter 8, we investigate the first application of tightly coupled array (TCA) concept into ultra-wideband arrays with CP radiation. Instead of trying to reduce the mutual coupling among the elements, it exploits the strong mutual coupling to improve the bandwidth of a CP array. By using the strong coupling in a constructive way, it overcomes the bandwidth limitation of CP arrays which are constituted by narrow-band elements