Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Taipei, March 2528, 2013

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Circularly Polarized Patch Antenna Based on Chiral Metamaterial

Yahong Liu, Ying Qi, Kun Song, Shuai Gu, and Xiaopeng Zhao
Smart Materials Laboratory, Department of Applied Physics
Changan Campus, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian 710129, China

Abstract In this paper, a circularly polarized (CP) patch antenna with chiral metamaterial
(CM) has been proposed. The proposed antenna is consisted of conventional linearly polarized
(LP) patch antenna and CM. The proposed antenna operated at the frequency where CM resonates. The antenna performances have been studied. The study results show that the patch
antenna can present CP characteristics when the CM cover is placed above the conventional LP
rectangular patch antenna. A simple approach for achieving CP antenna has been provided in
the present paper.
1. INTRODUCTION

Circularly polarized (CP) antennas have been received considerable attention for the applications in
the fields of wireless mobile communications, radar detection and so on. CP antennas can provide
better mobility and weather penetration than linearly polarized (LP) antennas [1]. A conventional
method to construct a patch antenna with CP radiation is to produce two degenerate orthogonal
modes with equal amplitude and 90 phase difference on the radiating element. However, CP
antenna often needs dual-fed or multi-fed mechanism [24]. The feeding network complicates the
CP antenna design and fabrication.
Recently, chiral metamaterial (CM) has been attracted interests due to its unique properties,
such as negative refraction, electromagnetic activity, and circular dichroism. Tretyakov [5] firstly
proposed CM which can realize negative refraction due to their strong optical activity. Pendry [6]
and Monzon [7] also demonstrated CM is alternative route toward negative refraction CM may
have paved a simple way for designing CP antenna.
2. ANTENNA DESIGN

The proposed antenna is consisted of conventional rectangular LP patch antenna and CM. In the
proposed antenna, we use wheel-like CM proposed by Chang [8]. The CM is composed of two layers
copper wheel on both sides of the substrate. The upper wheel is an enantiomeric form of the bottom
one, with a relative twist of 45 . The design antenna is operated at about 7 GHz. Using commercial
software CST microwave studio basing on a finite integration technique, an accurate modal analysis
of the conventional LP rectangular patch antenna is carried out to determine the patch dimension
of 11.9 mm 13.4 mm. The dimension of plane ground is the same to that of substrate with
37 mm 37 mm. The substrate is chosen as Teflon with relative permittivity r = 2.65 (tangential
loss of 0.009) and 0.8 mm thickness. A 50 coaxial probe used to feed the antenna was situated
at (0.9, 2) in the cartesian coordinates. The designed antenna operates at frequency where CM
resonates. The substrate of the CM is the same to that of antenna. The CM used in the proposed
antenna is consisted of 5 5 unit cells. The corresponding geometric parameters of CM which
resonates at 7 GHz are as follows: ax = ay = 7.4 mm, r = 2.8 mm, g = 0.2 mm and w = 0.2 mm.
The copper has a thickness of 0.035 mm. The distance between the LP patch antenna and CM
influences antenna performances. Employing CST microwave studio, the optimal distance of about
0.6 is obtained. The prototype of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 1.
In this paper, the simulations were studied with CST Microwave Studio. In the simulations,
a LP electromagnetic wave is incident on the CM; the unit cell boundary conditions were applied
to the x and y directions and absorbing boundary conditions were applied to the z direction. In
the experiment, the results are measured by using an AV 3629 (45 MHz40 GHz) vector network
analyzer with two standard horn antennas.
3. ANTENNA PERFORMANCES

Figure 2 shows the antenna reflection coefficient. It can be seen that the antenna operates at 7 GHz
for the simulation. Whereas the measured result shows the antenna operates at 7.22 GHz, which
shifts to high frequency as compared to the simulated one. The discrepancy between the measured

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w
ax
S11(dB)

r
g

ay
Figure 1: The prototype of the proposed CP antenna.

(a)

0
-5
-10
-15
-20
-25
-30
-35
-40

Sim.
Mea.
5

7
8
Frequency (GHz)

Figure 2: The reflection coefficient of the

proposed antenna.

(b)

Axial ratio (dB)

Figure 3: The radiation patterns of the proposed antenna with CM. (a) LCP and (b) RCH.

(a)

(b)

Figure 4: The radiation patterns of the conventional antenna without

CM. (a) LCP and (b) RCH.

45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
conventional antenna without CM
0
proposed antenna with CM
-5
-180 -120 -60
0
60 120
Angle (degree)

180

Figure 5: The comparative antenna axial ratio.

and simulated results may be due to the fabrication tolerance and the Teflon board material where
the actual dielectric constant is a little different from the value used in the simulations.
The antenna radiation patterns are shown in Fig. 3. It presents that the gain of LCP component
is 7.48 dB and the gain of RCP component is 0.359 dB. The LCP gain is much higher than that
of RCP component, which implies the antenna with CM presents the LCP characteristics. RCP
radiation characteristics can be achieved by simply flipping the CM cover by 180 .
Figure 4 gives the radiation pattern of the conventional patch antenna without CM cover. It can
be seen that the gain of LCP component is 4.67 dB and the gain of RCP component is 4.44 dB. The
LCP gain is the same to that of RCP component, which implies the conventional antenna presents
the LP characteristics. It can be concluded that antenna polarization mode can be changed from
LP mode to CP mode due to the CM.
In order to explore the polarization properties of the antennas, Fig. 5 shows the simulated
axial ratio. It can be observed that the antenna axial ratio is 40 for the conventional LP antenna
without CM, whereas the axial ratio for the antenna with CM is 1.039. It is demonstrated that the
introduction of CM can reduce antenna axial ratio greatly.

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4. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, a CP patch antenna based on CM has been proposed. The antenna polarization
mode can be changed from LP mode to CP mode due to the introduction of the CM is significant.
Nowadays, with the technological development in wireless mobile communications, CP antennas
have captured more and more attention. It can be expected that the proposed CP patch antenna
has the potential application in the field of communications, radar detection, and among others.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 11204241,
50936002, and by the NPU Foundation for Basic Research under Grant JC201154.
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