Single-Feed, Wideband, Circularly Polarized, Crossed Bowtie Dipole Antenna for Global Navigation Satellite Systems

A wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna with a single feed is proposed for use in global navigation satellite systems. Its primary radiation elements are composed of two orthogonal bowtie dipoles, which are equipped with double-printed vacant-quarter rings to allow direct matching of the antenna to a single 50-Omega coaxial line and to produce CP radiation. The crossed bowtie dipole is appropriately incorporated with a planar metallic reflector to produce the desired unidirectional radiation pattern as well as to achieve a wideband characteristic in terms of impedance matching and axial ratio (AR) bandwidths. The designed antenna was fabricated and measured. The prototype antenna with an overall 1.2-GHz frequency size of 0.48 lambda(o) x 0.48 lambda(o) x 0.25 lambda(o) produced a measured vertical bar S-11 vertical bar<-10 dB bandwidth of 1.05-1.79 GHz and a measured 3-dB AR bandwidth of 1.12-1.64 GHz. It also showed right-hand CP radiation with a small gain variation (+/- 0.3 dB) and high radiation efficiency (>93%) over the operational bandwidth.