Circularly polarized patch antenna array for satellite communication in Ku band

This paper presents a patch antenna array for circular polarization (CP) operation. CP is produced by the truncated corner of a square patch loaded with a U-slot. The array consists of 3 layers. The bottom layer is a hollow metallic waveguide feed network to provide corporate feeding to 64 cavities through aperture coupling. The rectangular cavities constitute the middle layer. Each cavity then excites a 2×2 subarray on the top layer with each element fed by a coupling probe through a circular hole. Good impedance matching and CP radiation characteristic can be achieved by the 16×16 antenna array. The proposed antenna can be used in Ku band satellite communication.