A Wideband Circularly Polarized Array Antenna With Compact and High-Efficiency Feeding Network

A wideband circularly polarized (CP) waveguide array antenna is proposed in this article. The proposed array antenna consists of four antipodally ridged elements and a compact feeding network with two orthogonal septa inserted to a stepped cavity. Both the components are wideband and they can work independently or together. The proposed topology gives a good solution to feed a 2 × 2 waveguide subarray which is the basis of large-scale arrays. It exhibits a larger working bandwidth than the array antennas fed by high-order mode cavities. A prototype is fabricated using 3-D printing and milling technologies. Measured results demonstrate a bandwidth of 40.3% from 9.9 to 14.9 GHz, in terms of the reflection coefficients less than -15 dB and the axial ratios smaller than 3 dB. An expanded 8 × 8 CP array antenna is explored based on the proposed 2 × 2 subarray to show the potentials of our design, and a total efficiency over 78% within a bandwidth of 38.7% is obtained by simulation.