Dispersion engineered right/left-handed transmission lines enabling near-octave bandwidths for wideband CP patch arrays

Composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission lines have recently attracted a significant interest due to their abilities to generate phase characteristics which go beyond the typical right-handed lines. In this work, we demonstrate their use in generating a wideband quadrature phase excitation for creating circular polarization (CP) with antenna systems capable of generating two orthogonal polarizations. In particular, we investigate their application towards a patch antenna array of sequentially rotated elements. By engineering the dispersion of the CRLH lines, we have been able to measure roughly 60% AR-S₁₁ bandwidth with a prototyped 2 × 2 array of sequentially rotated wideband, single layer patch antennas.