Compact microstrip antennas with very wide ARBW and triple circularly polarized bands

This article presents two compact circularly polarized microstrip antennas with a very wide 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth and triple circularly polarized bands. A hexagonal stub (circular polarization element) along with tuning element in the ground plane is used for achieving wide 3 dB ARBW in antenna‐1, while a novel approach of using a parasitic strip around the circular polarization element is used in antenna‐2 for introducing band elimination notches in the circularly polarized band of antenna‐1. The antenna‐1 has a −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 12.34% (3.8‐4.3 GHz), 84.02% (4.9‐12 GHz), and 3 dB ARBW of 79.94% (4.9‐10.9 GHz). The antenna‐2 displays circularly polarized band elimination notch characteristics with −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 24.80% (3.85‐4.94 GHz), 31.72% (6.1‐8.4 GHz), 25.35% (9.3‐12 GHz), and 3 dB ARBW of 4.84% (4.63‐4.86 GHz), 19.08% (6.02‐7.29 GHz), and 5.7% (9.54‐10.1 GHz). Both the antennas are designed and fabricated on FR4 substrate of dimension (0.52 × 0.52 × 0.04)λ 0 at a frequency of 7.9 GHz.