IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

10, 2011 259

Dual-Band Circularly Polarized Pentagonal

Slot Antenna
Y. Sung

Abstract—A novel design is described for a dual-band circularly

polarized pentagonal slot antenna. The circular polarization (CP)
radiation characteristics are achieved by loading with proper
asymmetry, which is placed at the opposite angle of the feed line.
A prototype of the proposed design is implemented and measured.
Measured results show that radiation patterns with good CP
characteristics are obtained at the two resonant frequencies.
Index Terms—Dual-band circular polarization (CP) antenna,
slot antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION
HE RING antenna is very attractive because wireless
T communication systems usually require smaller device
size in order to meet circuit miniaturization and cost reduction.
The radiation characteristics of a ring slot microstrip antenna
are complementary to those of a ring microstrip antenna
with electric and magnetic field interchanged using Babinet’s
principle [1]. Slot microstrip antennas are usually designed
for a linear polarization. However, the circularly polarized
antennas are attracting much attention in recent years. In
some applications such as satellite communication systems, a
circular polarization (CP) antenna is more suitable because of
its insensitivity to transmitter and receiver orientations. They
are also used in radar to reduce the clutter from spherically
symmetric objects like raindrops, hail, etc. [2]. For the design
of the single-feed ring slot microstrip antenna with CP opera-
tion, generally the required two orthogonal modes with equal
amplitude and 90 phase difference can be excited by dual
feeding [3], by protruding a tuning stub [4], and by a pair of
perturbations, which is located at one of diagonals [5]. In [6],
CP radiation of the proposed design is achieved by introducing
proper asymmetry in the ring slot structure and feeding the
ring slot using a microstrip line at 45 from the introduced
asymmetry.
In this letter, we demonstrate that a novel pentagonal slot
antenna can be applied into dual-band CP operation. By intro-
ducing proper asymmetry to the proposed slot antenna, the sym-
metry of the structure can be perturbed, which makes it possible
for excitation of two near-degenerate orthogonal modes for CP
operation.
II. SINGLE-ANTENNA GEOMETRY
The basic configuration investigated in this letter is shown in
Fig. 1. White regions represent etched slot on the ground plane.
Manuscript received February 17, 2011; revised March 07, 2011; accepted
March 08, 2011. Date of publication April 05, 2011; date of current version
April 14, 2011. This work was supported by Kyonggi University Research under
Grant 2010.
The author is with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Kyonggi Uni-
versity, Suwon 443-760, Korea (e-mail: yjsung@kgu.ac.kr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2011.2129551
1536-1225/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
Fig. 1. Pentagonal slot antenna for a single band.
The dotted line represents a 50- microstrip line on the opposite
side. The antenna proposed here is fabricated on commercially
available FR4 substrate with mm, , and tan
. To simplify the design and discussion, the width
of the feed line is chosen to be 3 mm, which corresponds to the
characteristic impedance of 50 . The antenna is fed by a mi-
crostrip line through proximity (electromagnetically) coupling.
A quarter-wave is used as the matching circuit. The SEMCAD X
3-D electromagnetic (EM) field simulation tool is used for an-
tenna design [7].
Fig. 2(a) shows the simulated for the proposed antenna
with different perturbation lengths . The side length of the
slot is selected to be 23.5 mm. The other parameter values used
are mm and mm. The impedance matching con-
dition can be optimized when mm and mm.
In here, the length is altered while fixing at 0.7 mm. The sim-
ulated results show that an increase in the length of the perturba-
tion causes a greater split between two degenerated modes and
thereby widens the 10-dB bandwidth. Fig. 2(b) demonstrates
the CP performance of the proposed antenna when the perturba-
tion length is varied. It is observed that the simulated 3-dB axial
ratio (AR) bandwidth increases a little when the perturbation
length varies from 5 to 8 mm. In this letter, it is observed that
minimum AR has the optimum value as the length mm.
Fig. 3 shows the performance of the proposed antenna with
different widths of the perturbation. The other dimensions are
the same as the above. As increased, so did the 10-dB band-
width. With the width chosen to be 0.6 mm, the CP perfor-
mance had the optimum value in this study. When Figs. 2 and
3 are compared, even though the change in (0.1 mm) was far
smaller than the change in (1 mm), the parameter had a sig-
nificant effect on the antenna’s performance. In addition, from
260 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10, 2011

Fig. 2. Simulated (a) j S j and (b) axial ratio of the proposed antenna with Fig. 3. Simulated (a) j S j and (b) axial ratio of the proposed antenna with
different lengths a. different widths b.

the results in Figs. 2 and 3, if the size of the perturbation became

bigger, CP could be easily obtained, but the minimum AR value
increased. On the other hand, a small perturbation width made
it very difficult to couple the two degenerate modes. Therefore,
the appropriate perturbation size is required.

III. DUAL-BAND CP ANTENNA

The structure of the proposed slot antenna is shown in Fig. 3.
The outer and inner ring resonate around 2.4 and 5.8 GHz. The
prototype of the proposed slot antenna with optimal geometrical
parameters as shown in Fig. 4 is constructed and measured. The
geometric dimensions of the proposed antenna are as follows:
mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, and mm. Fig. 5 shows measured and
simulated frequency responses of comparison for the pro-
posed antenna. The measured impedance bandwidths (10-dB Fig. 4. Proposed pentagonal slot antenna.
) are 14.3% and 8.1% for the two resonant frequencies. The
shift in frequency between the simulation and the measurement Fig. 6 shows the simulated relative to changes in the
is less than 76 MHz. Results clearly indicate that the antenna’s feed-line length . Other parameters for the antenna excluding
lower-band CP mode at 2.4 GHz is mainly contributed from the are the same as described previously. The simulated results
large pentagonal slot. For the case with the small pentagonal slot show that, as is increased, and decrease while re-
only, it generates higher-band CP mode at 6 GHz. Therefore, the mains unchanged. In this case, matching at and improves.
frequency ratio between the operating frequencies can be tuned Measured results show that broadside radiation patterns with
by varying two slot size. These are two undesirable modes ex- good CP characteristics are obtained at the two resonant fre-
cited as about 4.26 and 4.98 GHz. Based on the simulated results quencies. Fig. 7 shows the measured axial ratio of the proposed
in Fig. 5, they are harmonics of the large pentagonal slot. antenna. The measured 3-dB axial ratio bandwidths of the
SUNG: DUAL-BAND CIRCULARLY POLARIZED PENTAGONAL SLOT ANTENNA
Fig. 5. Simulated and measured result.
Fig. 6. Simulated j S j of the proposed antenna with different feeding line
length L .
Fig. 7. Measured axial ratio.
proposed antenna are 7.6% for the lower band and 4.1% for the
upper band.
Radiation patterns are measured at the two resonant fre-
quencies, where the parameters of the proposed antennas are
the same as those given in Fig. 4. The electrical size of the
ground plane is at approximately . Fig. 8 plots the
measured radiation patterns of the proposed antenna at 2.4 and
5.8 GHz, which are defined as the frequencies with minimum
axial ratio in the operating bandwidth. Note that a printed slot
antenna is a bidirectional radiator, so the radiation patterns on
both sides of this antenna are similar. The design arrangements
shown in Fig. 1 radiate a left-hand circularly polarized (LHCP)
wave in the upper-half space and right-hand circularly polar-
ized (RHCP) wave in the lower-half space. When the feed line
261
Fig. 8. Measured radiation pattern. (a) 2.4 GHz. (b) 5.8 GHz.
is located at the right, opposite CP radiation can be achieved.
Measured peak gains are 3.7 and 3.2 dBi, respectively.
IV. CONCLUSION
A dual-band circularly polarized pentagonal slot antenna has
been proposed and experimentally studied. The proposed an-
tenna exhibits CP operation because the corner cut is used as a
perturbation. A prototype of the proposed design is successfully
implemented. Thanks to its compactness and circular polariza-
tion, the proposed antenna represents an interesting alternative
for mobile communication systems.
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