Broadband circularly polarized fabry‐perot antenna integrated with wideband phase shifter for satellite communication

This letter presents a broadband circularly polarized Fabry‐Perot (FP) antenna with high gain. A double‐layer partially reflective surface (PRS) with patch arrays with different sizes is employed. This proposed PRS can provide positive reflective phase gradient in a wideband frequency range, resulting in a significant improvement of 3‐dB gain bandwidth. To obtain the property of wideband circular polarization, a wideband microstrip patch antenna fed by a feeding network integrated with a broadband 90° phase shifter is applied as the primary source. A prototype operating at X‐band is fabricated and tested; whose 3‐dB gain bandwidth achieves 28.3% with the peak gain of 14.7 dBi. Moreover, its 3‐dB bandwidth of axial ratio (AR) can achieve 30% from 8.5 to 11.5 GHz. This antenna is a promising candidate for X‐band satellite communication due to its high gain, wideband AR, and fabrication simplicity. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:1109–1113, 2016