Design and Simulation of an Octafilar Helical Antenna (OHA) with Differential Feeding in Ku band Satellite Applications

The helical antenna has been used throughout the years in satellite communication applications because of its high performances. This paper focuses on octafilar helical antenna (OHA) that consists of eight conductors with 45° phase difference. Each of the conductor is 501.32 mm long. The top portion of all conductors are connected together and the bottom portion of each conductor is surrounded with one type of dielectric material. Moreover, the dielectric material is coated with the perfect electrical conductor (PEC). The operating frequency of the proposed OHA is in Ku band. The OHA is simulated at the far-field region and the reflection parameter is observed as −19.698 dB which can convenient for satellite applications. The values of directivity are 11.24 dBi and 10.85 dBi at 16.5 GHz and 16.7 GHz respectively which are reasonable considering other antennas. The excellent feature of this antenna is the gain which are obtained as 9.738 dB and 9.90 dB at 16.5 GHz and 16.7 GHz respectively.