Dual Circular Polarisation Receive Antenna Element for Ka-Band Satellite Communications

Abstract

A low-profile antenna element with dual-circular polarization for 5G satellite on the move (SOTM) applications is presented. The antenna operates at Ka-band and consists of probe fed stacked patches and a miniaturized coupler able to cover the downlink band, from 17.8 to 20.2 GHz. The dimensions of the multilayer structure are 0.5$\lambda\ { \mathbf{x}\ 0.5} \lambda\ { \mathbf{x}\ 0.07} \lambda$, which makes the antenna element suitable as a unit cell of a phased array antenna. The proposed highly integrated unit cell element exhibits a 13% impedance bandwidth over ±40° scanning range and an axial ratio below 3dB within the entire frequency band.