IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
12, 2013
Investigation of Circularly Polarized Patch Antenna
With Chiral Metamaterial
Yahong Liu, Kun Song, Ying Qi, Shuai Gu, and Xiaopeng Zhao
AbstractIn this letter, a circularly polarized (CP) patch an-
tenna with chiral metamaterial (CM) is proposed. The proposed
CP patch antenna is composed of a conventional linearly polar-
ized (LP) patch antenna and a CM. When placing the CM in the
presence of a conventional LP patch antenna, the antenna polar-
ization can be changed to CP mode. The antenna performances
have been investigated numerically and experimentally. A simple
method for realizing CP antenna is provided by using CM in the
present letter.
Index TermsAntenna polarization, chiral metamaterial, circu-
larly polarized patch antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
C IRCULARLY polarized (CP) antennas have received
considerable attention for the applications in the fields
of wireless mobile communications, remote sensing, satellite
communications, and radar detection as they can not only
receive arbitrary polarization electromagnetic waves, but addi-
tionally the electromagnetic waves that they radiate can also be
received by other arbitrary polarization antennas. CP antennas
can provide better mobility and weather penetration than lin-
early polarized (LP) antennas. Meanwhile, they can reduce the
multipath effects and allow more flexible orientation of the
transmitting and receiving antennas [1]. CP patch antennas
have attracted considerable attention in various types of CP
antennas due to their low profile, low cost, and light weight.
A conventional method to construct a patch antenna with CP
radiation is to produce two degenerate orthogonal modes with
equal amplitude and 90 phase difference on the radiating ele-
ment. Several techniques for achieving CP antennas have been
reported in recent decades [2][7]. Printed circular or square
patch geometries with perturbing narrow slots or truncated
stubs can realize circular polarization [2]. Tong and Huang [3]
proposed a CP antenna by using a two-port U-shaped microstrip
feedline couples into square ring patches. Mak and Luk [4]
obtained CP radiation by using four sequentially rotated config-
urations of the crossed dipole. However, an external Wilkinson
power divider was employed for the feed mechanism. From the
previous references, a dual-fed, multifed mechanism or a power
Manuscript received September 21, 2013; accepted October 11, 2013. Date
of publication October 17, 2013; date of current version October 24, 2013. This
work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under
Grants 11204241, 50936002, and 51272215; the NPU Foundation for Basic Re-
search under Grant JC201154; and the NPU Aoxiang Star Project.
The authors are with the Smart Materials Laboratory, Department of Ap-
plied Physics, Changan Campus, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian
710129, China (e-mail: yhliu@nwpu.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2013.2286191
1536-1225 2013 IEEE
1359
divider is to generate two orthogonal modes for achieving a
CP antenna. The feeding network complicates the CP antenna
design and fabrication.
Recently, chiral metamaterial (CM) [8][16] has attracted
great interest because of its unique properties. A material is
defined to be chiral if it lacks any planes of mirror symmetry.
Chiral materials are characterized by a cross coupling be-
tween the electric and the magnetic dipoles along the same
direction. This results in the breaking of degeneracy between
the two circularly polarized waves; i.e., the refractive index
is increased for one circular polarization and reduced for the
other. If the chirality is strong enough, negative refraction may
occur for one CP wave. Tretyakov et al. [8] first proposed CM
that can realize negative refraction due to its strong optical
activity. Then, Pendry [9] and Monzon and Forester [10] also
demonstrated that CM is an alternative route toward negative
refraction. Later, CM has been studied from microwave fre-
quency to optical regime. Besides negative refraction, CM has
two important properties. The first one is optical or electro-
magnetic activity, which can rotate the polarization plane of
an LP wave propagating through it. The second property is
circular dichroism, which is attributed to the difference of a
right-hand circular polarized (RCP) wave and left-hand circular
polarized (LCP) wave. Zarifi et al. [17] demonstrated that CM
could improve the performances of the CP antenna. CM may
have paved a simple way for designing CP antennas.
In this letter, a CP patch antenna based on a CM has been pro-
posed. It is demonstrated that antenna polarization mode can be
changed from LP mode to CP mode when a CM is placed above
the conventional LP patch antenna. The antenna performances
including antenna reflection, axial ratio, and radiation pattern
are studied numerically and experimentally. The simulated re-
sults are in agreement with the experimental ones.
II. WHEEL-LIKE CHIRAL METAMATERIAL
Ye et al. [11] first proposed bilayered wheel-like CM res-
onated at 2.829 GHz where the CM transmits the one-handed
circularly polarized component of an arbitrarily polarized inci-
dent wave, but effectively blocks the other. The CM is com-
posed of copper wheel on both sides of the substrate. The upper
copper wheel is an enantiomeric form of the bottom one, with a
relative twist of 45 . On the basis of Ye et al.s work, we fabri-
cated the wheel-like CM shown in Fig. 1 operated at 8.5 GHz.
The substrate with relative permittivity (tangential
loss of 0.001) and 0.8 mm thickness is chosen in this letter.
The corresponding geometric parameters are shown as follows:
mm, mm, mm, and mm. The
copper has a thickness of 0.035 mm.
1360
Fig. 1. Schematic view of the CM: (a) unit cell and (b) a photograph of the CM
sample.
Fig. 2. Electromagnetic resonant spectrums of the CM: (a) simulations and
(b) measurements.
It is known that RCP wave and LCP wave are the two eigen
modes of the electromagnetic wave in CM, and the four corre-
sponding transmission coefficients, , , , and , substrate is the same as the substrate of the CM with relative
which characterize the responses of the CM, can be expressed
in terms of the four linear transmission coefficients , ,
, and by the following transformation [13]:
(1)
where and are the transmission coefficients for the
RCP and LCP waves, respectively. The cross-coupling trans-
missions and can be neglected as they are near zero
in symmetry at normal incidence.
In order to study the electromagnetic resonant behaviors of
the CM, we conducted numerical simulations and experiments.
The simulations were studied by using commercial software
CST Microwave Studio, which implements a finite integration
technique. In the simulations, an LP electromagnetic wave is
incident on the CM; the unit-cell boundary conditions were ap-
plied to the - and -directions, and absorbing boundary condi-
tions were applied to the -direction. In the experiment, a CM
sample consisting of 30 30 unit cells was fabricated by using
standard optical lithography. The experiments were performed
by using an AV 3629 (45 MHz40 GHz) vector network ana-
lyzer with two standard horn antennas.
The simulated and the measured results of the CM are shown
in Fig. 2. For the simulations, the transmission coefficient of the
RCP component is near to zero (0.015) at 8.415 GHz, where that
of the LCP component can be up to 0.95. The RCP component is
suppressed, and the LCP component is significant. This means
that an LP transmitted electromagnetic wave exhibits prominent
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013
Fig. 3. Conventional LP patch antenna: (a) antenna prototype and (b) the re-
flection coefficients.
LCP characteristics. The measured resonant frequency shifts
higher to 8.6 GHz. This may be due to the inhomogeneous ep-
silon of board material and fabrication tolerance.
III. PROPOSED CP ANTENNA BASED ON THE CM
A. Antenna Design and Simulations
The patch antenna frequency should be in the range of fre-
quency where the CM resonates. A conventional LP rectangular
patch antenna is designed, consisting of a copper radiation patch
on one side of a dielectric substrate and a ground plane full of
metallic copper on the other side of the substrate. The antenna
permittivity (tangential loss of 0.001) and 0.8 mm
thickness. Using CST Microwave Studio and empirical equa-
tion, an accurate modal analysis of the conventional LP rectan-
gular patch antenna is carried out to determine the patch dimen-
sions with 10.1 11.8 mm . The ground plane size and sub-
strate size are both 40 40 mm . A 50- coaxial probe used to
feed the antenna was situated at ( 0.5, 2) in the Cartesian co-
ordinates. The simulated antenna reflection coefficient presents
that the antenna operates at 8.45 GHz. In order to verify the sim-
ulation, the LP patch antenna shown in Fig. 3 was fabricated by
using standard optical lithography. The measured antenna re-
flection coefficient shows the antenna works at 8.64 GHz.
The study result shows that operation frequency of the LP
patch antenna is almost the same as that of the CM. The dimen-
sion of the CM consisting of 5 5 unit cells is identical with
that of the antenna substrate. The resonant spectrum of the 5 5
unit cells is almost the same as that of the 30 30 unit cells. In
order to make the antenna volume more compact, the CM con-
sisting of 5 5 unit cells is chosen in the proposed antenna. The
distance between the LP patch and the CM influences the an-
tenna performances. According to [18], resonance condition of
the antenna can be expressed as
(2)
where is the distance between the conventional patch antenna
and the CM, is the reflection phase, is the reflection
phase of the antenna ground plane, and is an integer. In order
to realize positive values of , should be equal to or greater
than 1. The first resonant mode corresponds to . Equation
(2) shows that the distance depends on for the cer-
tain operating wavelength. In the proposed antenna, the ground
LIU et al.: INVESTIGATION OF CIRCULARLY POLARIZED PATCH ANTENNA WITH CHIRAL METAMATERIAL 1361

Fig. 6. Simulated axial ratios.

Fig. 4. Simulated reflection phase of the CM.

Fig. 5. Proposed CP patch antenna based on the CM: (a) antenna prototype and
(b) simulated reflection coefficients for different .

plane can be regarded as perfect electric conductor (PEC).

is approximately equal to ( ) due to the finite ground
plane. Thus, (2) can be described as

(3)

Therefore, the distance is mainly determined by . Fig. 4

gives the simulated reflection phase . Substituting into
(3), the distance can be obtained. Employing antenna reso-
nance condition and CST numerical simulation, we acquire that
the antenna with the CM presents the CP characteristics when
the distance is mm. The prototype of the pro-
posed antenna is presented in Fig. 5(a). The simulated antenna
reflection coefficients for different are shown in Fig. 5(b). It
shows that the proposed antennas with the CM all work at about
8.48 GHz.
Electromagnetic coupling is present due to radiation. The
coupling between the patch and the CM affects antenna re-
flection [19]. For the patch only, the simulated best reflection
is 24.3 dB at 8.45 GHz. When the CM is located above the
patch, the simulated best reflection is 27.5 dB at 8.48 GHz.
The simulated reflection coefficient is improved, and the fre-
quency shifts slightly as compared to the convention patch
antenna. The results show the mutual coupling between the
patch and the CM is low.
Fig. 6 gives the antenna axial ratios, which shows the 3-dB
axial-ratio bandwidth covers from 8.38 to 8.62 GHz. Fig. 7
shows the simulated antenna radiation patterns for
and . LCP gain of the antenna without the CM is about
4.69 dB, and RCP gain is about 4.42 dB. LCP radiation pat-
tern is almost the same as RCP radiation pattern for the antenna
without the CM, which implies the antenna has the LP charac-
teristics. As the CM is placed in the presence of the antenna,
Fig. 7. Simulated radiation patterns: (a) and (b) .
antenna polarization mode is changed to CP mode. The antenna
excites LCP, and the cross polarization is RCP. The radiation
pattern shows LCP gain is up to 7.46 dB and RCP gain is low
to 0.25 dB. When is in the range of 2124 mm, the antenna
radiation patterns are almost the same. Furthermore, RCP radi-
ation characteristics can be achieved by simply flipping the CM
by 180 .
B. Measurements
The CP antenna with the CM was fabricated by using stan-
dard optical lithography to verify the simulations. The perfor-
mance of the proposed CP antenna with mm has been
studied as a representative. Fig. 8 presents the proposed antenna
prototype and its reflection coefficients. The measured antenna
center resonant frequency is about 8.6 GHz, which shifts a little
higher than the simulation.
1362 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

and experiments. The proposed CP antenna is composed of a

conventional LP patch antenna and the CM. The study results
show that the conventional LP patch antenna can be changed to
the CP patch antenna when the CM is placed above the LP patch
antenna. The novelty of this letter is antenna polarized mode
can be modified due to the CM. We provide a simple method
to achieve a CP antenna by using the CM as compared to the
previous CP antennas. It is expected that the proposed simple CP
patch antenna may benefit applications in the fields of mobile
wireless communication and radar detection, among others.

Fig. 8. Proposed CP patch antenna based on the CM: (a) photograph of the
proposed antenna with mm and (b) reflection coefficients.
Fig. 9. Measured antenna axial ratio.
Fig. 10. Measured radiation patterns ( ): (a) LCP and (b) RCP.
The radiation patterns and axial ratio were measured in an
anechoic chamber using a standard gain horn antenna as a ref-
erence and computed using data from their far-field compo-
nents and using formulas from [20]. Fig. 9 shows the mea-
sured antenna axial ratio, which shows 3-dB axial-ratio band-
width covers from 8.3 to 8.71 GHz. The measured radiation
patterns in the plane of are shown in Fig. 10. For
the antenna without the CM, LCP gain is 4.84 dB and RCP
gain is 4.86 dB. The results indicate the antenna without the
CM presents LP characteristics. However, for the antenna with
the CM, the measured results show that the LCP gain increases
to 7.46 dB, whereas the RCP gain reduces to 0.82 dB. The mea-
sured results are in agreement with the simulations. It is demon-
strated that the proposed antenna presents the LCP.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, we have proposed the CP patch antenna based on
the CM and studied the antenna performances with simulations
REFERENCES
[1] J. R. James and P. S. Hall, Handbook of Microstrip Antennas.
London, U.K.: Peregrinus, 1989, pp. 219253.
[2] X. L. Bao and M. J. Ammann, Comparison of several novel annular-
ring microstrip patch antennas for circular polarization, J. Electro-
magn. Waves Appl., vol. 20, no. 11, pp. 14271438, 2006.
[3] K. F. Tong and J. J. Huang, New proximity coupled feeding method
for reconfigurable circularly polarized microstrip ring antennas, IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 18601866, Jul. 2008.
[4] K. M. Mak and K. M. Luk, A shorted cross bowtie patch antenna
with a cross dipole for circular polarization, in Proc. IEEE Antennas
Propag. Int. Symp., 2007, pp. 27022705.
[5] K. L. Lau and K. M. Luk, Novel wide-band circularly polarized patch
antenna based on L-probe and aperture-coupling techniques, IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 577580, Jan. 2005.
[6] Y. F. Lin, H. M. Chen, and S. C. Lin, A new coupling mechanism
for circularly polarized annular-ring patch antenna, IEEE Trans. An-
tennas Propag., vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 1116, Jan. 2008.
[7] L. M. Si, W. R. Zhu, and H. J. Sun, A compact, planar, and CPW-fed
metamaterial-inspired dual-band antenna, IEEE Antennas Wireless
Propag. Lett., vol. 12, pp. 305308, 2013.
[8] S. Tretyakov, I. Nefedov, A. Sihvola, S. Maslovski, and C. Simovski,
Wave and energy in chiral nihility, J. Electromagn. Waves Appl., vol.
17, no. 5, pp. 695706, 2003.
[9] J. B. Pendry, A chiral route to negative refraction, Science, vol. 306,
pp. 13531355, 2004.
[10] C. Monzon and D. W. Forester, Negative refraction and focusing of
circularly polarized waves in optically active media, Phys. Rev. Lett.,
vol. 95, p. 123904, Sep. 2005.
[11] Y. Ye, X. Li, F. Zhuang, and S. W. Chang, Homogeneous circular
polarizers using a bilayered chiral metamaterial, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol.
99, p. 031111, 2011.
[12] E. Plum, J. Zhou, J. Dong, V. A. Fedotov, T. Koschny, C. M. Souk-
oulis, and N. I. Zheludev, Metamaterial with negative index due to
chirality, Phys. Rev. B, vol. 79, p. 035407, 2009.
[13] J. Zhou, J. Dong, B. Wang, T. Koschny, M. Kafesaki, and C. M. Souk-
oulis, Negative refractive index due to chirality, Phys. Rev. B, vol.
79, p. 121104(R), 2009.
[14] S. Zhang, Y. Park, J. Li, X. Lu, W. Zhang, and X. Zhang, Negative
refractive index in chiral metamaterials, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 102, p.
023901, 2009.
[15] Z. Li, R. Zhao, T. Koschny, M. Kafesaki, K. B. Alici, E. Colak, H.
Caglayan, E. Ozbay, and C. M. Soukoulis, Chiral metamaterials with
negative refractive index based on four Usplit ring resonators, Appl.
Phys. Lett., vol. 97, p. 08190, 2010.
[16] K. Song, Y. H. Liu, Q. H. Fu, X. P. Zhao, C. R. Luo, and W. R. Zhu,
90 polarization rotator with rotation angle independent of substrate
permittivity and incident angles using a composite chiral metamate-
rial, Opt. Express, vol. 21, no. 6, pp. 74397446, 2013.
[17] D. Zarifi, H. Oraizi, and M. Soleimani, Improved performance of
circularly polarized antenna using semi-planar chiral meta-material
covers, Prog. Electromagn. Res., vol. 123, pp. 337354, 2012.
[18] S. Wang, A. P. Feresidis, G. Goussetis, and J. C. Vardaxoglou, High-
gain subwavelength resonant cavity antennas based on metamaterial
ground planes, Inst. Elect. Eng. Proc. Microw. Antennas Propag., vol.
153, no. 1, pp. 16, 2006.
[19] J. L. Volakis, Antenna Engineering Hndbook, 4th ed. New York, NY,
USA: McGraw-Hill, 2007, pp. 34-834-12.
[20] B. Y. Toh, R. Cahill, and V. F. Fusco, Understanding and measuring
circular polarization, IEEE Trans. Educ., vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 313318,
Aug. 2003.