A Circularly Polarized Low-Cost Flat Panel Antenna Array With a High Impedance Surface Meta-Substrate for Satellite On-the-Move Medical IoT Applications

A 1×3 linear antenna array consisting of Quad-Arm Curl antenna with a High impedance meta-surface (QACH) is presented. We believe that it is the first linear phased array solution which can provide 360° azimuth coverage. This array has been designed to operate at L-Band (1.518 - 1.675 GHz) and generate right hand circularly polarized radiation to primarily target the Inmarsat BGAN satellite constellation. The metamaterial structure integrated into each antenna element allows a low-profile height of 17.2 mm (λ1.597/10.9). Since the curl element has wideband characteristics, the array is able to provide shared aperture functionality. The array guarantees high gain beam steering for low elevation angles (up to θ = 70° from the zenith) with an average gain of 7.96 dBic at θ = 70°. In comparison, to achieve an equivalent high gain a conventional 4×5 patch array would be required (3 elements vs 20 elements). This means that the proposed array requires 80% fewer phase shifters, amplifiers and LNAs. This translates to a crucial commercial advantage in relation to manufacturing cost. This development can lead to disruption of the existing Satcom market by lowering the barrier-to-entry for customers looking for a mass deployable, low-cost IoT on Satcom solution

Reconfigurable Phased Array Antenna Consisting of High-gain High-Tilt Circularly Polarized Four-arm Curl elements for Near Horizon Scanning Satellite Applications

A 2×2 phased array consisting of beam reconfigurable four-arm Right Handed Circularly Polarized (RHCP) curl unit element antennas is presented. This array is designed at test frequency of 5.2 GHz and can undertake a high-gain near-the-horizon scanning with low grating lobes. Each curl antenna element has four ports and can provide four RHCP tilted-beams ( θ = 48°) with a gain of 8.3 dBic. By switching the feeding ports, the curl element can reconfigure / switch these unit element beams in four different quadrants in space. The array exploits these high-gain high-tilt switchable beams for generating an extremely wide scanning range from -80° ≤θ≤ +80°. For the 2×2 array, in this range, the beam has a maximum gain of 12.4 dBic at θ = 40°. More importantly, the array provides RHCP beams with a gain of 10.5 dBic at near-the-horizon angles of θ≈ 70° and provides a lower gain of 6.5 dBic in the zenith direction. This has promising applications in Communications On The Move (COTM) using Flat Panel Antenna (FPA) to Geosynchronous Orbit (GSO) satellites. Here, when operating at high latitudes require high-gain at near-the-horizon angles