A planar wideband circularly polarized antenna for satellite communications

A planar wideband circularly polarized antenna for Ku-band satellite communications is presented. The antenna consists of an array of bow-tie antennas printed on a thin dielectric substrate that is fed through a corporate feed divider network. The array is backed by a low dielectric substrate coated with a metallized ground plane to provide one-sided radiation. This configuration is sandwiched by three low dielectric substrates placed directly on top of the array. A metallization pattern layer defined on each substrate converts the linear polarization to circular polarization. The final configuration offers a 21% axial-ratio bandwidth in a robust, low-cost, easy to manufacture, planar structure.