Design of a Printed Quadrifilar Helical Antenna

Abstract

An open-ended and omnidirectional Printed Quadrifilar Helical Antenna (PQHA) having a fractional number of turns is designed for the purpose of Satellite Communication in the S-band, to achieve a wide beamwidth and Right Hand Circular Polarization (RHCP). The frequency of operation is 2200 MHz for the PQHA. The substrate used is RT Duroid of thickness 0.508 mm. Parametric study and simulations are carried out using HFSS Software. A corporate feed network is designed for impedance matching and is also used to provide the required quadrature phase shift. The PQHA yields good results; VSWR below 1.5, Axial Ratio below 1.5 dB, and half power beamwidth greater than 190 degrees.