Miniaturized Low-Profile Circularly Polarized Metasurface Antenna Using Capacitive Loading

A miniaturized circularly polarized (CP) metasurface (MS) antenna using capacitive loading is investigated. First, one novel miniaturized MS unit cell is proposed. By introducing a pair of capacitive-loading strips inserted along the diagonal of a corner-truncated patch, 56% size reduction is achieved for this miniaturized unit cell. Accordingly, a compact CPMS antenna of a 4 x 4 array composed by the miniaturized unit cells is designed and fed by a slot structure. Compared with the conventional CP MS antenna without capacitive-loading strips, 63% overall size reduction can be achieved. Furthermore, the CP radiation mechanism of the CP MS antenna is revealed and explained clearly using the characteristic mode analysis (CMA). For demonstration, a prototype of the proposed CP antenna was fabricated and measured. The measured 3 dB axial ratio (AR) band is from 3.33 to 3.63 GHz, and the 10 dB impedance band is from 3.02 to 3.82 GHz, while 6.5 dBi gain is realized within the CP operating band.