Multiband circularly-polarized stacked elliptical patch antenna with eye-shaped slot for GNSS applications

This paper introduces a tri-band stacked elliptical patch antenna featuring a right-handed circular polarized, designed to operate at the L2, L5, and L1 Global Navigation Satellite System bands. Initially, an elliptic patch is constructed and fed by a probe feed to generate TM110 and TM210 modes at resonance frequencies calculated using Mathieu functions. The probe position is precisely adjusted to excite the quasi-orthogonal mode of TM110 to generate circularly polarized (CP) waves at the L2 and L5 bands. Subsequently, an eye-shaped aperture is engraved into the elliptical patch to enhance the axial ratio (AR) beamwidth in the L2 and L5 bands and stimulate the orthogonal mode of TM210 to produce CP waves at the L1 band. Lastly, a stacked partially elliptical parasitic element is placed beneath the upper slotted elliptical patch to enhance the orthogonality of TM210 surface current versions and thus improve the AR beamwidth at the L1 band. The proposed antenna shows low reflection coefficient values at 1.12–1.33 (L2/L5), and 1.5–1.66 GHz (L1). The AR beamwidths are 133/213∘, 167/163∘, and 36/103∘ at two orthogonal cutplanes at L5, L2, and L1 bands, respectively. The antenna also has decent gains of 6–6.9 dBic across the three bands.