A Circularly Polarized Circular Antenna Array for Satellite TV Reception

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel design of a wideband compact circularly polarized circular antenna array for satellite TV reception. The circular array is based on a wideband circularly polarized spiral antenna element which has excellent impedance matching (VSWR ≤ 1.5) and axial ratio bandwidths for the satellite-to-ground downlink at Ku-band from 11.7-12.7 GHz. A 16-element circular sub-array is presented with a fixed 23° electronically steered beam upwards which is appropriate for Astra satellite communications in the UK. Furthermore, circular sub-arrays with different numbers of elements (8, 16, 24, 32 and, 40) are also studied. It is shown that the circular antenna array is particularly suitable for satellite TV reception while being vertically mounted on a wall because of its low profile, broadband and electronically steered beam.