L-Band Circularly Polarized Small Aperture Thin Textured Patch Antenna

An ultra thin L-band textured patch antenna is proposed with a 12.5% impedance bandwidth centered at 1.6 GHz. The antenna can cover several bands, including two satellite L bands at 1.525-1.560 GHz (uplink) and 1.625-1.660 GHz (downlink). It employs quadrature feeding for circular polarization and its textured design on the thin substrate (<lambda/40 at 1.6 GHz, epsiv_r=18) was generated via genetic algorithms optimization. The overall patch is less than lambda/3timeslambda/3 in aperture (including ground plane) and it delivers a remarkably constant simulated 4.2 dBi gain.