A wideband circularly polarized patch antenna with conical radiation pattern

A circularly polarized conical-beam patch antenna that employs a hybrid feeding mechanism for wideband operation is presented in this paper. It is implemented through using a pair of L-probes and apertures, which are connected by the feeding network, to excite the circular patch in orthogonal directions. The patch is supported by two plastic posts of 0.084 lambda(0) height in the air, where X 0 is the free space wavelength at 2.53GRz. This antenna possesses an impedance bandwidth of 28.2% (SWR < 1.5) and an axial ratio bandwidth (AR < 3dB) of 28.3%. Also, it has left hand circularly polarized (LHCP) conical patterns with the peaks located at around theta = +/- 33 degrees over these bandwidths. Moreover, its 3-dB gain bandwidth and peak gain are 32.4% and 5.5dBi, respectively.