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International Journal of Antennas and Propagation
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 829371, 5 pages
doi:10.1155/2012/829371
Improved Low-Profile Helical Antenna Design for INMARSAT Applications
School of Information Science and Technology, Dalian Maritime University, Liaoning, Dalian 116026, China
Received 9 April 2012; Revised 19 May 2012; Accepted 20 May 2012
Academic Editor: Z. Chen
Copyright © 2012 Shiqiang Fu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
A new low-profile variable pitch angle cylindrical helical antenna employing a copper strip as impedance transformer is proposed in this paper. Under the circumstance of a limited antenna height, the circular polarization performance of the antenna has been enhanced by changing the pitch angle and the input impedance matching has been improved by adjusting the copper strip match stub. The design method of the proposed antenna is given. The optimal antenna structure for INMARSAT application has been fabricated and measured. The measured results show that in the whole maritime satellite communication work band the VSWR is less than 1.2, its antenna gain is higher than 9 dBi, and the axial ratio is lower than 2.5 dB. The experimental results have a good agreement with the simulations. The proposed antenna is compact and easy tuning. It provides a promising antenna element for maritime satellite communication applications.