A wideband circularly polarized crossed magneto-electric dipole

A novel wideband crossed magneto-electric (ME) dipole for circularly polarized (CP) radiation is proposed in this paper. The proposed antenna consists of a crossed dipole, four parasitic elements, and two pairs of folding metal plates (magnetic dipole). The parasitic elements and magnetic dipole are employed to enhance the axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW). The antenna size is 0.51 lambda(0) x 0.51 lambda(0) x 0.33 lambda(0), where lambda(0) is the corresponding free-space wavelength at the center frequency. A prototype antenna is fabricated and tested. The experiment results depict that the impedance bandwidth (IBW) for voltage standing wave ratio < 2 is 79.2% (2.5-5.78 GHz) and the 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) is 72.5% (2.7-5.77 GHz). At the same time, good CP characteristics and stable symmetrical radiation patterns can be obtained across the operation bandwidth.