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0018-926X 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Wideband Circular Polarization Reconfigurable Antenna
Wei Lin and Hang Wong
AbstractThis communication introduces a polarization reconfigurable
wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna, which consists of four radi-
ating arms connected to a reconfigurable feeding network. The four
radiating arms excited by the feeding network are able to generate wide-
band CP waves with bidirectional radiation patterns in free space. In order
to increase the gain and obtain a broadside radiation pattern, the proposed
antenna is placed above a metallic reflector with the distance of quarter
wavelength at the center frequency. In addition, polarization reconfigura-
bility is realized by utilizing PIN diodes in the feeding transmission lines
such that left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) and right-handed cir-
cular polarization (RHCP) modes can be selectively excited by controlling
the ON/OFF states of the PIN diodes. The proposed antenna exhibits a wide
impedance bandwidth of 80% and an overlapped axial ratio (AR) band-
width of 23.5% for both modes. The antenna gain is stable across the
operating bandwidth with the peak gain of 4.8 dBic. The antenna has a
wide AR beamwidth of 90 . The presented work is suitable for GPS, CNSS,
or RFID applications.
Index TermsBroadside radiation pattern, PIN diodes, polarization
reconfigurable antenna, wideband.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Antennas with reconfigurable characteristics such as frequency, pat-
tern, and polarization diversities have drawn more and more attention
in modern wireless communication systems. Polarization reconfig-
urable CP antennas are able to generate both LHCP and RHCP
radiations, which can serve many purposes like enhancing the sys-
tem capacity, avoiding the multipath effects in wireless channels and
polarization coding for digital systems [1][3]. Many efforts have
been demonstrated on the polarization reconfigurable CP antennas
[4][17]. In general, there are two key methods to realize reconfig-
urable polarizations for CP antennas: reconfigurable radiating element
and reconfigurable feeding network.
Microstrip patch antennas are usually applied to reconfigurable
radiating elements for obtaining polarization reconfigurability as in
[4][14] due to their planar structures and easy integration with active
RF switches. However, their operating bandwidths are commonly nar-
row. For example, circular and rectangular patches were modified as
the reconfigurable radiating elements in [4][12].
The RF switches (PIN diodes) connected in the slots etched on the
patches were to reconfigure the radiating structures for obtaining dif-
ferent polarizations. Nonetheless, the maximum bandwidth among the
above designs is only 2.8%. Besides the circular and the rectangular
patches, four center-fed L-shaped patches with a sequential rotation
were proposed in [13] to generate reconfigurable CP polarizations. The
Manuscript received December 12, 2014; revised August 05, 2015; accepted
September 12, 2015. Date of publication October 09, 2015; date of current ver-
sion November 25, 2015. This work was supported in part by the Research
Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR, China, under Project CityU138413,
and in part by the Fundamental Research Program of Shenzhen City under
Grant JCYJ20140509155229810.
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves,
Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong,
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong (e-mail: weilin6-c@my.cityu.edu.hk; hang.wong@
cityu.edu.hk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are
available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2015.2489210
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2015 5939

bandwidth of this antenna is only 2%. Furthermore, an E-shaped patch

antenna with the RF switches [14] can obtain both LHCP and RHCP
radiations but its operating bandwidth (7%) is still narrow.
Using feeding networks [15][17] to reconfigure radiation patterns,
beam steering directions and polarizations are the second popular tech-
nology for reconfigurable antenna designs; however, these approaches
are very challenging to obtain the wide bandwidths. For instance,
an annular slot fed by a reconfigurable transmission line achieved
polarization diversity with the impedance bandwidth of 4.7% [15]. A
square patch antenna excited by a reconfigurable feeding network [16]
obtained the operating bandwidth of 3.5%. A circular patch fed by a
reconfigurable CPW network [17] realized the operating bandwidth
less than 2%. All the above examples show that the reconfigurable net-
work approaches would exhibit narrow operating bandwidths, which
are impractical for modern wireless applications.
In this communication, we introduce a wideband (23.5%) polariza-
tion reconfigurable CP antenna which consists of four radiating arms
with sequential excitations by a reconfigurable feeding network. The
feeding network has a compact size. It is formed by two 1:2 Wilkinson
power dividers printed on the same substrates with the radiating arms.
By selecting the PIN diode (Bar50-02L from Infineon Technologies
[18]) biasing in the feeding network, the radiating arms can generate
either LHCP or RHCP broadside radiation pattern when the antenna
is placed above a metallic reflector with a quarter-wavelength sep-
aration. A detailed antenna configuration is discussed in Section II.
The antenna operating principle is presented in Section III.
Measured results are given in Section IV. Finally, Section is the
conclusion.

II. A NTENNA C ONFIGURATION

The proposed antenna has a compact structure which consists of
three substrates stacked together by four plastic screws as shown in
Fig. 1. Four planar radiating arms and a feeding network are printed
on the upper two substrates (Substrate#1 and Substrate#2) and the dc
biasing lines are printed on the bottom substrate (Substrate#3). All the
substrates are from Wangling Ltd. with the same relative permittivity
r = 2.65, the thickness of 1 mm, and the loss tangent of 0.001. The
antenna is centered-fed by an SMA coaxial cable.

A. Radiating Arms With a Reconfigurable Feeding Network

Four radiating arms play as the radiating elements connected to the
outputs of a reconfigurable feeding network. Two arms are printed on
the top surface of Substrate#1. Another two arms are attached at the
bottom surface of Substrate#2. These four radiating arms are arranged
in sequential rotation. On the other hand, the feeding network is con-
structed by two Wilkinson power dividers. As shown in Fig. 1, one
power divider is located at the top surface of Substrate#1; another is
found in the bottom surface of Substrate#2. The two power dividers
are mirror to each other by this back-to-back stacked configuration. A
floating metallization plane is shared by the two substrates, which acts
as the common ground for the two power dividers. There is a cutting
slot (2 mm 10 mm) etched in the center of the metallization plane to
prevent any contact between the inner feeding conductor and the met-
allization plane. The mirror structure of two power dividers provides
four sequentially phase-delayed output ports, which connect the four
sequentially placed radiating arms correspondingly. Each Wilkinson
power divider feeds two sequential arms located on different sub-
strates. As a result, the four radiating arms can generate CP radiations.
The overall thickness of Substrates#1 and #2, including their metal-
lization layers, is 2 mm. This thickness is selected which is much
smaller than the operating wavelength, to eliminate the asymmetry
Fig. 1. Antenna configuration. (a) Top view without metallic reflector. (b) Side
view with metallic reflector. (c) Bottom view without metallic reflector.
problem in the radiation pattern owing to the radiating arms in dif-
ferent layers of the substrate. The proposed feeding network with the
reconfigurable outputs is modified from our prior work in [19] by uti-
lizing the PIN diodes in the power dividers to control the sequence of
the output phases. A differential source is applied to the input ports
of the two power dividers. To realize this, the inner conductor of a
coaxial cable is connected to the input port of the transmission line of
the top Wilkinson power divider and the outer conductor is connected
to the bottom one. To prevent the possible current leakage from the
outer conductor of the cable, we added a short-circuited sleeve Balun
[20] with the length of 42 mm (quarter wavelength at 1.8 GHz) and
diameter of 10 mm. Through the control of the PIN diode biasing, the
proposed antenna finally realizes the polarization switching.
B. DC Biasing Lines
In addition to the radiating elements, dc biasing lines are
indispensable for the reconfigurable implementation. In this design,
5940 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2015

TABLE I
K EY A NTENNA PARAMETERS

the dc lines are printed on the bottom surface of Substrate#3. These

dc biasing lines are divided into two sets supplied by voltages dc#1
and dc#2. In order to minimize their interference from the antenna Fig. 2. Current distribution of the proposed antenna within a period (LHCP^z
radiation, ferrite beads as RF chokes are utilized to block the RF sig- mode as red diodes are ON). (a) t = 0. (b) t = 1/4 T. (c) t = 2/4 T.
nal flowing into these dc lines. One set of the dc lines supplied with (d) t = 3/4 T.
the voltage dc#1 connects to the quarter-wave impedance transformers
through the metallic posts (same diameter with the drill holes Dh and
isolated from the middle metallization plane) as Set A with RF chokes
as shown in Fig. 1. In this manner, both the top and the bottom quar-
ter wave transformers are supplied with the same dc (voltage dc#1).
Similarly, another set of the dc lines connect to the four radiating arms
supplied with the voltage dc#2 through the metallic posts as Set B.
Other metallic posts P1, P2, P3, and P4 as Set C (sequentially located
on a circle with a diameter of 45.3 mm) connect the radiating arms
and the transmission lines on the other side together. As the result,
the diodes between the arms and the impedance transformers can be
switched. There are 16 diodes used in this design. A circular hole at
Substrate#3 provides a possibility for a coaxial cable connection to the
Wilkinson power dividers to excite the four radiating arms.
Detailed key antenna parameters are listed in Table I. The center fre-
quency of the proposed antenna operates at 1.6 GHz which can cover Fig. 3. Normalized radiation patterns of the proposed antenna at 1.6 GHz
GPS bands for satellite communications. in simulation (unit: dB). (a) Bidirectional pattern (antenna in free space).
(b) Broadside pattern (antenna above a conducting reflector with the distance
of quarter wavelength and diameter of 150 mm).

III. O PERATING P RINCIPLE

A. Mechanism of the Wideband CP Radiation
In the proposed antenna, four sequentially rotated radiating arms
excited by the sequentially phase-delayed feeding network generate a
wideband CP radiation. Fig. 2 shows the current distributions of the
four radiators with the feeding network in a period time. The differ-
ential excitation of two Wilkinson power dividers enables to deliver
four outputs with equal magnitudes with the sequential 90 phase-
delayed differences. In this manner, the resultant currents on the four
arms form a clockwise rotation as the output phases of the feeding
network are clockwise-delayed in this state. The radiation of the four
radiators is equivalent to the radiation of two orthogonally placed
dipoles with the 90 phase difference. Therefore, the wideband circular
polarization is generated.
The CP radiating arms show bidirectional radiation patterns in free
space as shown in Fig. 3. Both broadside and backside radiation pat-
terns at 1.6 GHz have similar shape but opposite polarizations with
a broadside directivity of 2.4 dB. For a practical implementation and
a gain enhancement, the proposed antenna is placed above a metallic
reflector. The broadside radiation pattern can be realized with a direc-
tivity of 7.7 dB when the antenna is placed above the metallic reflector
with a quarter-wavelength distance H.
The impedance and axial ratio (AR) bandwidths of the antenna are
wide due to the introduction of the proposed feeding network. As
shown in Figs. 4 and 5, the feeding network has the wide impedance
bandwidth operating from 1 to 2.5 GHz. In the simulation, we use the
differential source to excite the feeding network and all output ports
are terminated with 50 loads. In addition, the magnitudes of the four
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2015
Fig. 4. Simulated reflection coefficient and transmission of the proposed
feeding network.
Fig. 5. Simulated phase differences between four output ports of the proposed
feeding network.
Fig. 6. AR bandwidths for LHCP mode with and without the isolation resistor
of the Wilkinson power dividers.
output ports (P1, P2, P3, P4 of Fig. 1) are similar with the discrep-
ancy of 0.25 dB. In addition, the phase differences among four output
ports are stable across the large bandwidth (90 20 from 1.24 to
1.96 GHz). Furthermore, the good isolation between each output ports
is crucial for the resonating radiating arms to generate wideband CP
radiation as shown in Fig. 6. Therefore, two isolation resistors (100 )
are placed at the boundary between the transmission lines to provide
the good isolation. To conclude, all above desired responses at the out-
put ports of the power divider contribute to the wideband CP radiation
to the proposed antenna.
5941
Fig. 7. Measured characteristics of Infineon Bar50-02L PIN diode.
Fig. 8. Arrangement of the PIN diodes on the top Wilkinson power divider of
the proposed antenna.
B. Reconfigurable Polarizations Realization
In order to realize the reconfigurable polarizations in this design,
the PIN diode (type: Bar50-02L from Infineon Technologies [18]) was
adopted because of its appropriate isolation and good transmission
performance within our interested frequency band. Fig. 7 shows the
measured isolation and transmission coefficients of the diode. For the
entire bandwidth from 1 to 2.5 GHz, the isolation is around 1622 dB
and the insertion loss varies from 0.1 to 0.5 dB. The forward current of
this diode when turned ON is 100 mA. The diode is surface mount type
(package size 0403: 1 mm 0.6 mm). The equivalent circuit model of
the diode is used in the simulation as the same as in [3].
Fig. 8 shows the arrangement of PIN diodes on the proposed
antenna. Due to the symmetrical structure of the antenna, another half
does not show in this figure. All diodes can be divided into two groups:
red (dark) and green (light) groups, which are arranged toward the
same direction from right to left. In the feeding network, the center
quarter wave transformers are applied with the voltage dc#1 and the
four radiating arms are applied with the voltage dc#2. Two diodes
are connected between the biasing voltages dc#1 and dc#2 in each
current path. There are four current paths in total as shown in this
figure.
Polarization reconfigurable feature is realized by controlling each
group of the diodes as shown in Table II. For example, all red diodes
turn ON and green diodes turn OFF if the biasing voltages dc#1 and
dc#2 are 3 and 0 V, respectively. In this state, the LHCP mode is gener-
ated since the phases of the four outputs are clockwise delayed as show
in the current distributions in Fig. 9(a). The segments of the transmis-
sion lines that become effectively floating between two diodes in the
OFF state do not act as parasitic elements that would affect the radia-
tion patterns. On the contrary, the RHCP mode is generated when the
dc biasing voltages of dc#1 and dc#2 change to 0 and 3 V, respectively.
In this state, the phases of the four outputs are anti-clockwise delayed.
5942 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2015
TABLE II
P OLARIZATIONS BY D IFFERENT S TATUS OF PIN D IODES
Fig. 9. Demonstration of reconfigurable polarizations realization by controlling
PIN diodes.
Fig. 10. (a) Top view of the fabricated antenna. (b) Bottom view of the
fabricated antenna without the reflector.
IV. M EASURED R ESULTS
The fabricated antenna prototype is shown in Fig. 10. The antenna is
fixed above a metallic reflector. All the simulated results were obtained
from Ansoft HFSS software. The reflection coefficients were measured
by Agilent Vector Network Analyzer and the antenna radiation patterns
were measured in SATIMO near-field measurement system.
Fig. 11 shows the measured and simulated reflection coefficients
for both modes (State1 for RHCP mode and State2 for LHCP mode).
Fig. 11. Measured and simulated reflection coefficients for both modes.
Fig. 12. Measured and simulated AR bandwidths for both modes ( = 0 ).
Fig. 13. Measured gain across the operating band for both modes.
A large 10-dB impedance bandwidth of 80% from 1 to 2.35 GHz is
obtained. Since the actual value of the equivalent circuit for the diode
may differ from the labeled value, the loading effects will also be
different. Thus, there is some discrepancy from simulated and mea-
sured results. This discrepancy may be caused from the PIN diode
modeling in simulation. As long as the measured impedance band-
width can cover the measured AR bandwidth, good CP radiation can
be guaranteed.
Therefore, the measured impedance matching has discrepancy with
the simulated one. As long as the measured impedance bandwidth can
cover the measured AR bandwidth, good CP radiation can be guaran-
teed. Fig. 12 exhibits the measured and simulated AR bandwidths for
both modes. The simulated and the measured results are in good agree-
ment. The value of CP co-pol and x-pol will change simultaneously
according to the impedance matching. Therefore, the AR bandwidths
are not affected by the discrepancy in impedance matching. The mea-
sured AR bandwidth for the LHCP mode is 37.8% from 1.5 to 2.2 GHz
and the corresponding values of the RHCP mode is 26.9% from 1.45
to 1.9 GHz. The overlapped AR bandwidth for both modes is 23.5%
from 1.5 to 1.9 GHz.
Fig. 13 presents the measured gain across the operating bandwidth
for both modes. Uniform level of antenna gain is observed across
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2015
Fig. 14. Measured and normalized radiation patterns of the proposed antenna
within the operating bandwidth for both modes. (a) LHCP mode at 1.5 GHz.
(b) RHCP mode at 1.45 GHz. (c) LHCP mode at 1.85 GHz. (d) RHCP mode at
1.675 GHz. (e) LHCP mode at 2.2 GHz. (f) RHCP mode at 1.9 GHz.
Fig. 15. Measured AR beamwidth at the center frequencies (1.675 GHz for
RHCP mode and 1.85 GHz for LHCP mode) for both modes.
the entire operating bandwidth with the peak gain of 4.8 dBic. From
the results, the cross-pol gain in LHCP mode is smaller than that in
RHCP mode within the operating bandwidth of the proposed antenna.
This is due to the difference of power divider configurations between
5943
the LHCP and RHCP modes. As shown in Fig. 9, the radiating arm
orientations are identical for both modes but the power divider configu-
rations are different. The current Ja on the radiating arm is in the same
direction with the current Jt on the transmission line when the antenna
operates at the LHCP mode as shown in Fig. 9(a). However, the two
currents Ja and Jt are in the opposite direction when the antenna
changes to the RHCP mode as illustrated in Fig. 9(b). Therefore, the
cross-polarization levels for both modes are different. This is also the
reason why the AR bandwidths for both modes have discrepancy as
shown in Fig. 12.
Fig. 14 gives the measured radiation patterns of the proposed
antenna within the operating bandwidth. Good broadside radiation pat-
terns are achieved for both modes at the center frequency and two
edged-band frequencies. Large 3-dB AR beamwidths (larger than 90 )
can also be observed as in Fig. 15. In this graph, the negative theta val-
ues indicate the observing points are for = 180 if the AR values are
plotted in = 0 plane and for = 270 if the AR values are plotted
in = 90 plane.
All above results show that our proposed antenna is able to success-
fully generate the wideband reconfigurable LHCP or RHCP radiations
by simply switching the two dc biasing voltage.
V. C ONCLUSION
Polarization reconfigurable wideband CP radiating arms have been
studied in this communication. Four planar radiating arms with a
reconfigurable feeding network placed above a metallic reflector
are able to generate the wideband CP broadside radiations in both
LHCP and RHCP modes. The antenna has the wide impedance
bandwidth of 80% and the AR bandwidth of 23.5% from 1.5 to
1.9 GHz. The antenna with the simple structure can be applied to GPS,
RFID, or other wireless systems which prefer wideband CP antenna
characteristics.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge all the valuable comments
from the reviewers and the suggestion made by one of the reviewers to
incorporate a Balun in order to reduce the asymmetry of the radiation
patterns.
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0018-926X 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
5.8-GHz Stacked Differential Rectenna Suitable for
Large-Scale Rectenna Arrays With DC Connection
Tatsuki Matsunaga, Eisuke Nishiyama, and Ichihiko Toyoda
AbstractIn this communication, a novel stacked differential rectenna
is proposed and its characteristics are experimentally investigated. The
proposed rectenna can effectively convert RF power to dc due to its dif-
ferential operation. The conversion efficiency of 44.1% was obtained when
the received power density was as low as 0.041 W/m2 . The proposed
rectenna can easily achieve large-scale rectenna arrays effectively using
its simple structure. The rectenna array with DC connection provides
almost the same conversion efficiency and incident angle characteristics
in comparison with a single rectenna.
Index TermsDifferential operation, large-scale rectenna array,
rectenna, stacked structure, wireless power transmission.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Recently, wireless power transmission has become an attractive
application of the microwave technology [1][3]. A rectenna which
receives an RF wave and converts it into dc power is one of the most
essential devices for the wireless power transmission systems [4], [5].
In such an application, improving conversion efficiency is strongly
required. Various kinds of rectenna have been proposed to solve the
issue. In 1998, a dipole rectenna achieved 82% conversion efficiency
at 5.8 GHz when the input power was 50 mW [6]. The rectenna has
a harmonic rejection filter which reduces second harmonics by 21 dB.
A rectenna using an artificial magnetic conductor has 61.4% conver-
sion efficiency for 8 dBm input power at 2.4 GHz [7]. Differential
operating rectennas that provide an excellent dc conversion efficiency
have been reported [8], [9]. We have also proposed a novel differential
rectenna unit, which achieves a good RF-to-dc conversion efficiency
even under low power conditions by applying the received RF waves to
the rectifying diode in antiphase, i.e., differential operation [10], [11].
When a large dc power that is sufficient to drive devices is required,
an array configuration is employed [8][13]. The two types of rectenna
arrays such as an RF-array and dc-array have been investigated [13].
In the case of the dc-array, a series, parallel and cascaded connections
have been discussed. Advantages and disadvantages of the each array
have been explained.
In this communication, a novel stacked differential rectenna is
proposed suitable for large-scale rectenna arrays that are a series con-
nection, a parallel connection, and a seriesparallel connection of
rectenna units [14]. Design and features of the proposed rectenna are
described. A 30-element rectenna array (3-element rectenna 10) is
also demonstrated as an example of the large-scale rectenna array.
Manuscript received February 13, 2014; revised May 26, 2015; accepted
September 07, 2015. Date of publication October 15, 2015; date of current ver-
sion November 25, 2015. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI under
Grant 24560465.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saga
University, Saga 850-8402, Japan (e-mail: matsunaga@ceng.ec.saga-u.ac.jp;
nisiyama@ceng.ec.saga-u.ac.jp; toyoda@cc.saga-u.ac.jp).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are
available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2015.2491319