A Wideband Circularly Polarized Filtering Dipole Antenna

Abstract

This paper presents a circularly polarized (CP) antenna based on crossed dipoles with bandpass-type filtering radiation response. The antenna employs a pair of crossed dipole arms as radiators, which are printed on the upper and lower planes of the substrate. To achieve bandpass filtering effects, radiation nulls are introduced on both sides of the passband. By vertically extending the ends of the four dipole arms, a ring-shaped current is formed between adjacent dipoles, generating the upper-band radiation null. Additionally, four parasitic patches are introduced parallel to the ends of the crossed dipole arms, creating another upper-band radiation null, further enhancing the frequency selectivity at the band edges and broadening the axial ratio (AR) bandwidth. Moreover, a square-ring slot is etched on the ground plane to introduce a lower-band radiation null, ultimately achieving a good bandpass filtering response. The proposed wideband CP filtering dipole antenna is implemented and tested. The antenna has a compact size of 0.49λ0× 0.49λ0× 0.16λ0 (where λ0 denotes the wavelength corresponding to the lowest operating frequency). The measured results show that the proposed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 75% (1.65–3.66 GHz) and an overlapping AR bandwidth of 46.9% (2.25–3.63 GHz). Without additional filtering circuits, the antenna exhibits a stable gain of approximately 7 dB and three radiation nulls, with suppression levels of 20 dB in both the lower and upper stopbands, achieving good bandpass filtering performance.