Broadband circularly-polarised microstrip antenna with switchable polarisation sense.

A circularly-polarised microstrip antenna capable of switching polarisation sense is presented. The proposed microstrip antenna has a circular radiating patch and is excited by an open-loop microstrip line through the coupling of a ring slot in the ground plane. Two ends of the open-loop microstrip line can be taken for the input ports to excite right-hand and left-hand circular polarisations, respectively. A prototype using PIN diodes to electrically switch the input ports is implemented, and the measured results show the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of more than 10% can be obtained at the two polarisation senses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]