Space-Borne Deployable P-Band Dual-Circular-Polarization Flexible Antenna Array

This letter presents a P-band dual-circular-polarization antenna array based on a flexible substrate. The antenna is excited by two orthogonal H-shaped slots etched on the ground plane. By feeding different ports of the three-stub hybrid coupler, different circular-polarization characteristics can be obtained. Measured results show that the frequency bandwidth of the antenna array with voltage standing-wave ratio less than 1.6 is 350-510 MHz, and the 3-dB axial-ratio bandwidth at least ranges from 400 to 460 MHz. The measured gain for the antenna arrays with 6 × 8 elements is 22.2 dBic at the frequency of 433 MHz. A six-way power divider and phase-shift network are adopted to investigate the beam scanning performance. Measured results indicate that the main beam can be scanned from θ = 0° to θ = -18.5° in the yz plane with good radiation consistency.