Single-feed slotted equilateral-triangular microstrip antenna for circular polarization

Novel designs of single-feed equilateral-triangular microstrip antennas for circular polarization (CP) are proposed and studied experimentally. It is demonstrated that by embedding a narrow slot or a cross slot of unequal slot lengths in the triangular patch, circularly polarized radiation of microstrip antennas can easily be achieved using a single probe feed. Furthermore, results show that for the design with a cross slot, the proposed antenna can perform CP radiation with a reduced antenna size at a given frequency (denoted as compact CP operation here); that is, the required antenna size is smaller for the proposed antenna for performing CP radiation as compared to a conventional circularly polarized triangular microstrip antenna at a fixed operating frequency. Details of the proposed CP designs are described, and typical experimental results are presented and discussed.