A Broadband Folded Printed Quadrifilar Helical

Antenna Employing a Novel Compact Planar Feeding

Circuit
Mathieu Caillet, Michel Clnet, Ala Sharaiha, and Yahia M. M. Antar,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 7, JULY 2010
Introduction
A broadband folded printed quadrifilar helix antenna (FPQHA) with compact feeding
network is proposed in the paper.
The novelty in the paper is the design of compact feeding circuit.
The cylindrical FPQHA fed by a planar double layer printed circuit.
This circuit is based upon aperture coupled transition
The FPQHA is gives superior axial ratio and wide bandwidth over a wide beamwidth.
Antenna Design
This design of FPQHA has been proposed in the paper
Y. Letestu and A. Sharaiha, Broadband folded printed quadrifilar helical antenna,
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 54, no. 5, pp.16001604, May 2006.
Four parallel radiating arms are printed on the thin dielectric
substrate.
The antenna is designed to operate at 1.4GHz.
Each arm is driven by same amplitude and 90 degrees phase shift.
Antenna Simulations
This design achieves bandwidth of 30%.
Maximum antenna gain varies between 2 and 3.5 dBi.
Compact Wideband Feeding Circuit
Double layer structure
Ground plane is between the two substrates.
It is called compact aperture-coupled microstrip transition.
Slot is etched in ground plane.
The feeding line of the transition is located on the upper
substrate.
A quarter-wavelength serial stub is required to match the
feeding line to 50 ohm.
A quarter-wavelength line is placed on top of the slot
between the two outputs to match the T-junction to 50 ohms.
The outputs of this dual-layer structure provide 180 phase
difference.
 The slot geometry is composed of mirrored C-shaped arms (10 mm high, and 4.5 mm
wide)
The linear slot is 17 mm long.
The presence of slot increases the level of back radiation and affects the axial ratio.
Two commercial surface mount 90 degrees
hybrids have been positioned on both sides
of the aperture-slot transition.
Measured Results
S11 of feeding circuit.
Characterization of Antenna
Measured S11 for FPQHA integrated with feeding circuit.
It gives 29% bandwidth from 1.18 to 1.58 GHz.
 Measurements for gain for three frequencies, F1 (1.225 GHz), F2 (1.375 GHz) AND F3
(1.575 GHz) have been made.
The maximum gain in CP is about 1.8, 2.3 and 1.5 dBic at F1, F2 and F3, respectively.

Gain for F1= 1.22GHz

 Axial Ratio
Conclusions
The antenna exhibits
excellent radiation characteristics
a constant gain
a low axial ratio over a wide frequency and
a wide beamwidth