A Wideband Circularly Polarized Magneto-Electric Dipole Transmitarray Antenna

Abstract

A wideband circularly polarized (CP) transmitarray antenna (TA) operating at X-band is presented in this paper. The broadband characteristic of magneto-electric (ME) dipole is exploited to design the CP TA unit cell. Besides, the cophasal far-field CP radiation is realized by adopting the element rotation method. The fabricated prototype not only possesses broad measured 1-dB and 3-dB gain bandwidths of 24.5% (10.75-13.75 GHz) and 33.3% (10-14 GHz), respectively, but also yields a wide 1.5-dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth of 37.4% (9.25-13.5 GHz), which achieves high-purity circular polarization. Peak gain of 24.3 dBic and peak aperture efficiency of 46% are respectively measured. Additionally, the proposed CP TA is printed on the planar circuit board (PCB) for low cost and mass production, which would be a promising candidate for wireless and satellite communication applications.