Compact Wideband Circularly Polarized Antipodal Curvedly Tapered Slot Antenna

A method to reduce one direction width of the circularly polarized antipodal curvedly tapered slot antenna, while maintaining the wide axial ratio (AR) and impedance bandwidth and endfire radiation, is proposed in this letter. In this method, the ridge structure in the broad wall of the slotted waveguide is used to increase the current path, which makes the antenna achieving the appropriate phase difference of orthogonal electric fields within narrow antenna width. To validate the proposed method, a prototype of the antenna was fabricated and measured. Experimental results show that the proposed antenna can achieve a bandwidth of 27.6% (50-66 GHz) for both AR <; 3 dB and reflection coefficient S11<;-10 dB and an average gain of 8.39 dBi.