DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF CIRCULAR POLARIZED ANTENNA FOR NAVIGATION APPLICATIONS

In navigation applications, circular polarized antenna with minimum axial ratio and wider bandwidth is the need of the hour.The minimum axial ratio means that the ratio between major axis amplitude to the minor axis amplitude of axial ratio pattern is almost equal and hence this circular polarized antenna will be insensitive to the orientation between the transmitter and receiver. The conventional patch antenna cannot be achieve wider bandwidth for navigation applications at lower frequency. So an aperture coupled antenna which can achieve wider bandwidth at lower frequency is preferred. By using a crossed slot to couple the electromagnetic energy from the microstrip feed to the radiating element, circularly polarized radiation can be easily obtained. To achieve a broadband circularly polarized operation, a circular microstrip patch was here put above an air layer with a 10 mm thickness. It was electromagnetically coupled to the crossed slots in the ground plane, which is fed by an L-shaped microstrip feed. The proposed design achieved right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) radiation at a center frequency of 1.435GHz. Single aperture coupled antenna produce axial ratio of 1dB. In order to reduce the axial ratio (<1dB) further and to produce 3dB beamwidth of 30 by using sequential rotation feeding, a 22 array antenna is designed and developed. This right hand circular polarized antenna is designed at the L-band of frequency from 1.415 to 1.455 GHz (3% bandwidth) and produce a gain of 13dBi and VSWR<1.6. This antenna is designed and simulated using Computer Simulation Technology(CST) microwave studio, fabricated and test validated in the anechoic chamber in the campus. SUBMITTED BY A.SATHISHKUMAR M.E-WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES REG NO: 10WT13 Dr.V.ABAHIKUMAR PRINCIPAL, TCE. GUIDED BY