THEORY AND EXPERIMENT OF A COMPACT WAVEGUIDE DUAL CIRCULAR POLARIZER

A new compact and wide-band waveguide dual circular polarizer at Ka-band is presented and tested in this paper. This compact structure is composed of a three-port polarizing diplexer and a circular polarizer realized by a simple pair of large grooves. The polarizing diplexer includes two rectangular waveguides with a perpendicular H-plane junction, one circular waveguide coupled in E-plane. A cylindrical step and two pins are used to match this structure. For a LHCP or RHCP wave in the circular port, only one specific rectangular port outputs power and the other one is isolated. The accurate analysis and design of the circular polarizer are conducted by using full-wave electromagnetic simulation tools. The optimized dual circular polarizer has the advantage of compact size with a volume smaller than 1.5λ³, broad bandwidth, uncomplicated structure, and is especially suitable for use at high frequencies such as Ka-band and above. The prototype of the polarizer has been manufactured and test, the experimental results are basically consistent with the theories.