A circularly polarized open loop antenna with application to an array fed by a microstrip comb line

A loop antenna having a gap has been investigated in the presence of a ground plane. The antenna configuration is optimized for the CP radiation, using the method of moments. It is found that, as the loop height above the ground plane is reduced, the optimized gap width approaches zero. Further antenna height reduction is found to be possible for an antenna whose wire radius is increased. On the basis of these results, we design an open-loop array antenna using a microstrip comb line as the feed network. It is demonstrated that an array antenna composed of eight open loop elements can radiate a CP wave with an axial ratio of 0.1 dB. The bandwidth for a 3-dB axial-ratio criterion is 4%, where the gain is almost constant at 15 dBi.