Miniaturized Wideband Circularly Polarized Triangular Patch Antennas based on Characteristic Mode Analysis

A miniaturized, wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna based on coupled triangular patches is presented. Initially, two identical triangular patches with shorting pins are placed close to each other in a perpendicular orientation. Hence, a pair of orthogonal modes can be produced based on the coupled resonators. Under the characteristic mode analysis (CMA), it can be found that the 90∘ phase difference is achieved by modulating gap distance and shorting pins numbers. Both the shape of triangle patches and shorting pins contribute to the miniaturization. To further improve the AR bandwidth, a third patch is added to form a new mode. Thanks to the triple modes produced by the three patch elements, two AR minima are constructed to broaden the AR bandwidth. With this compact arrangement and shorting pins, a miniaturized wideband CP patch antenna with a 5.2% AR bandwidth is successfully implemented. The overall size of the antenna is merely 0.34λ0×0.33λ0×0.046λ0.