IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO.
8, AUGUST 2018
Bandwidth Enhancement Utilizing Bias Circuit as
Parasitic Elements in a Reconfigurable
Circularly Polarized Antenna
Huy Hung Tran , Nghia Nguyen-Trong , Member, IEEE, Truong Khang Nguyen , Member, IEEE,
and Amin M. Abbosh , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—A circularly polarized (CP) crossed-dipole antenna
with switchable rotating sense is presented. The proposed design
has two main attractive features. First, a wide overlapped CP band-
width (BW) is realized for both operating states. Second, unlike
existing designs targeting a similar functionality, no biasing wire
through ground plane is required, which significantly reduces the
design complexity. The proposed design employs parasitic elements
for two different roles. For RF signal, these parasitic elements open
an additional CP resonance band to enhance the axial-ratio (AR)
BW. Additionally, through RF chokes, they provide a dc path to
bias the p-i-n diodes. An antenna prototype was experimentally
demonstrated with the capability of switching between two CP ro-
tating senses in a frequency range from 1.1 to 2.02 GHz, equivalent
to 58.9%. The antenna also exhibits a wide −10 dB impedance BW
of 53.3% (1.1–1.9 GHz) with a peak gain of around 9.1 dBi and
front-to-back ratio of more than 15 dB.
Index Terms—Cavity reflector, circularly polarized (CP)
antenna, crossed dipole, parasitic element, polarization-
reconfigurable, wideband antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
N ELECTRONICALLY reconfigurable antennas, p-i-n
I diodes and varactors have been popularly used. For this
type of radiator, the biasing network that provides dc-control
voltages for the tunable components, e.g., p-i-n diodes, is al-
ways necessary. This typically requires a careful design with
appropriate lumped elements, including RF chokes and bypass
capacitors. They are arranged in such a way that the antenna per-
formance does not significantly degrade compared to the ideal
case where only the tunable components are present. In several
circumstances, designing biasing circuits is quite challenging,
which makes the structure much more complicated.
This letter takes a different approach compared to the conven-
tional designs. We attempt to exploit the bias circuit to improve
Manuscript received June 5, 2018; accepted July 1, 2018. Date of publi-
cation July 5, 2018; date of current version August 2, 2018. This research is
funded by Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Develop-
ment (NAFOSTED) under Grant No. 103.05-2016.37. (Corresponding author:
Truong Khang Nguyen.)
H. H. Tran and T. K. Nguyen are with the Division of Computational Physics,
Institute for Computational Science, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh
City, Vietnam, and also with the Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineer-
ing, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City 70000, Vietnam (e-mail:,
tranhuyhung@tdt.edu.vn; nguyentruongkhang@tdt.edu.vn).
N. Nguyen-Trong and A. M. Abbosh are with the School of
ITEE, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld. 4067, Australia (e-mail:,
n.nguyentrong@uq.edu.au; a.abbosh@uq.edu.au).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2018.2853193
1536-1225 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: DELHI TECHNICAL UNIV. Downloaded on November 28,2023 at 12:22:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1533
the antenna performance. The design shown in this letter is a re-
configurable circularly polarized (CP) antenna with dual-sense
polarization reconfigurability. Indeed, due to their capabilities of
reducing polarization mismatch, this type of antenna is among
the most popular reconfigurable structures investigated in liter-
ature. Classical solutions were to use microstrip patch antennas
[1]–[3], which, however, commonly suffer from narrow opera-
tion bandwidth (BW). Alternatively, using switchable polarizer
[4] is another approach to achieve polarization reconfigurability.
Higher antenna profiles with different feeding techniques [5],
[6] and various structures, e.g., E-shaped patch [7], magneto-
electric dipole [8]–[10], and crossed dipole [11]–[14], have been
explored to improve the operation BW and provide additional
linear polarization (LP) states. However, such improvements
typically come with the cost of increasing design complexity,
especially in the dc biasing network.
For the antenna presented here, wide CP operation BW is
obtained by producing three adjacent CP bands. One of them
is excited by the original crossed dipole, while the others are
generated by a cavity [15] and parasitic elements [16]–[20],
respectively. The switching mechanism is simplified to only
using one switchable voltage source provided at the dc port
of a bias tee. This is achieved by appropriately arranging four
p-i-n diodes at the feeding position of the crossed dipole and
employing the parasitic elements as part of the biasing circuit.
Typical dc wires or metallic posts are not required here. The
use of parasitic elements as part of the biasing network as well
as a tool to improve CP BW is the main contribution of this
letter. Such a dual use of the parasitic elements distinguishes
the proposed design from all aforementioned antennas [1]–[14]
to significantly reduce the antenna complexity. The antenna
was simulated and optimized using the Ansoft High-Frequency
Structure Simulator (HFSS). In the following, we first present
the technique to achieve wideband performance in Section II
(for passive antennas), and then the reconfigurable design is
proposed in Section III.
II. WIDEBAND CP ANTENNA
The geometry of the wideband CP antenna is illustrated in
Fig. 1. It is constructed with two orthogonal straight dipoles,
four parasitic elements, and a square-shaped cavity. The dipoles
and parasitic elements are printed on both sides of a 1.575 mm
thick Rogers RO5880 substrate (εr = 2.2) and excited directly
by a 50 Ω coaxial cable.
To demonstrate the antenna operational principle, the
characteristics of a classical crossed dipole over a planar
1534 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 8, AUGUST 2018

Fig. 1. Geometry of the wideband CP antenna. The design parameters are

L d = 45.6, W d = 7, R = 5.2, W r = 1.4, g = 0.8, L p = 27.3, H s = 1.575,
H c = 55, and W c = 180 (unit: mm).

Fig. 3. AR characteristics of Antenna III for different values of parasitic

element’s length L p .

Fig. 2. (a) |S 1 1 | and (b) AR results for different antenna configurations.

reflector (Antenna I) [21], a crossed dipole over cavity

(Antenna II) [15], and parasitic-elements-added crossed dipole
over cavity (Antenna III) are shown in Fig. 2. It can be observed
that wider impedance-matching BW is achieved with the use of
parasitic elements and a cavity reflector [see Fig. 2(a)]. For the
axial ratio (AR) response, as shown in Fig. 2(b), Antenna I only
produces one local AR minimum. The performance of Antenna
I is significantly increased with the presence of square-shaped
cavity, as demonstrated in [15]. It is confirmed in Fig. 2(b) that
two local minima of AR are observed with the higher CP band
generated by the cavity reflector.
To further enlarge the AR BW, the technique of using para-
sitic elements [16] is employed and briefly demonstrated here.
As illustrated in Fig. 2(b), Antenna III shows a further enhance-
ment of the AR performance with three local minima of AR,
noting that the second minimum (at around 1.85 GHz) is not
pronounced in this case due to the coupling effect between Fig. 4. Geometry of the proposed wideband CP reconfigurable antenna. The
the dipole mode and the cavity mode. To prove that the third design parameters of the final structure are L d = 44.6, W d = 6, R = 4.4,
AR minimum (at around 2.2 GHz) is realized by the parasitic W r = 1.4, g = 1, L p = 24.4, H s = 1.575, H c = 65, and W c = 160 (unit:
elements, simulated AR curves versus the parasitic element’s mm). (a) Top view of the radiator. (b) Cross-section view of the antenna.
length Lp are presented in Fig. 3. The results confirm that the
local AR minimum at a higher frequency is controlled by the RF connections from dipole arms to the corresponding feeding
parasitic element size. patches. To switch ON the rotating sense of the antenna, the order
of excitation among four dipole arms is changed. This is done
III. WIDEBAND CP ANTENNA WITH by turning ON either the pair (D1 , D2 ) or the pair (D3 , D4 ).
POLARIZATION RECONFIGURABILITY For instance, when (D1 , D2 ) are turned ON while the others
are OFF, the horizontal dipole is excited first while the vertical
A. Antenna Configuration and Operation Principle
dipole is excited with a 90° phase delay through the connecting
Fig. 4 depicts the proposed wideband reconfigurable antenna ring. Thus, the antenna operates with right-hand circular polar-
with dual-sense CP realizations. Four p-i-n diodes are utilized ization (RHCP). The polarization modes and the corresponding
and grouped into two pairs: (D1 , D2 ) connecting to the horizon- p-i-n diode states of the antenna are summarized in Table I.
tal arms and (D3 , D4 ) connecting to the vertical arms. These Although this method of changing rotating sense was shown in
diodes also connect to the feeding patches F1 and F2 , which [11], it is much further developed here to improve the antenna
are, respectively, attached to the inner and outer conductors of performance. First, by using the parasitic elements and cavity, as
the coaxial cable. The p-i-n diodes can establish/disestablish shown in Section II, the AR BW can be significantly enhanced.

Authorized licensed use limited to: DELHI TECHNICAL UNIV. Downloaded on November 28,2023 at 12:22:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
TRAN et al.: BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT UTILIZING BIAS CIRCUIT AS PARASITIC ELEMENTS IN A RECONFIGURABLE CP ANTENNA 1535

TABLE I
p-i-n DIODE STATES FOR DIFFERENT OPERATION MODES

Second, by arranging the polarity of p-i-n diodes as in Fig. 4(a),

only two dc potentials V1 and V2 are necessary:
1) V1 : inner coaxial connector and two dipole arms at the
bottom;
2) V2 : outer coaxial connector and two dipole arms at the
top.
Therefore, for biasing, all parts of each Vi (i = 1, 2) need to
be dc connected. To satisfy this, the parasitic elements are uti-
lized as part of the dc biasing circuit to provide a dc connection
between each feeding patches and the corresponding orthogonal
dipole arms. This is easily carried out by adding four 220 nH
surface-mount choke inductors as RF chokes, two connecting
vias, and two printed dc lines, as shown in Fig. 4(a). The chokes
limit the RF current directly flowing from the dipole arms to the
parasitic element; however, the coupling between the dipoles
and parasitic elements remains the same for wideband perfor-
mance (as in Section II). Such a configuration of the biasing
circuit and the diode orientations allows the four diodes to be
biased with only one dc power source, which applies to the
cable’s inner and outer conductors through a Bias Tee placed
under the ground plane. It is noted that the proposed method sig-
nificantly simplifies the design with no required dc flying wires
and controlling circuit at the bottom as in the conventional ap-
proach. This also avoids RF chokes typically used at the end of
the dc wires before connecting to the control circuit [12], [22]. Fig. 5. Simulated performances of the proposed wideband CP reconfigurable
Furthermore, all antenna components, including the biasing cir- antenna. (a) |S 1 1 | and AR. (b) Gain and radiation efficiency.
cuit, are printed and placed on the top and the bottom sides of
the substrate, which makes the antenna assembly simpler and
reduces the cost. Another benefit is that, in principle, the ground
plane, i.e., the cavity in this case, can be removed, while still
keeping the reconfigurability. This is not the case in [7]–[12],
where dc biasing wires through a ground plane are compulsory.

B. Antenna Performances
To realize the polarization-reconfigurable antenna, the
p-i-n diodes type MADP-042305-13060 (MACOM Technical
Solutions) with forward bias resistance of Rp-i-n = 1.32 Ω and
reverse bias capacitance of Cp-i-n = 0.15 pF is used. Fig. 5
presents the simulated |S11 |, the AR, the broadside gain, and the
radiation efficiency for two CP modes of the proposed design. It
can be observed that the antenna is capable of switching between
RHCP and LHCP states in very wide overlapped impedance BW
of approximately 62.1% (1.0–1.9 GHz) and AR BW of 65.8%
(1.07–2.12 GHz). Within the AR frequency band, the antenna
also achieves a high broadside gain from 7.0 to 9.8 dBi and high
radiation efficiency values of greater than 92%. In this design,
the three local AR minima can be clearly observed in Fig. 5(b),
which confirms the principle shown in Section II.
IV. MEASUREMENT RESULTS
The proposed wideband antenna has been fabricated (as
shown in Fig. 6) and validated experimentally with (V1 , V2 )
set as either (0 V, 3 V) or (3 V, 0 V). The measured |S11 | and AR
Fig. 6. Fabricated antenna.
results of the proposed antenna for both CP modes are shown in
Fig. 7. It is found that the measured results are in good agreement
with the simulated ones. The measured overlapped impedance
BW for both CP states is 53.3% (1.1–1.9 GHz), while the figure
for the measured overlapped 3 dB AR BWs is approximately
58.9% (1.1–2.02 GHz). Fig. 8 shows the measured broadside
gain and radiation efficiency of the proposed antenna. A max-
imum gain of 9.1 dBi is achieved. High radiation efficiency of
better than 85% is obtained across the operating band. There
is a discrepancy in the measured and simulated efficiency, i.e.,
85% compared to 92%, which is attributed to the higher loss in
the p-i-n diodes. The radiation patterns for RHCP and LHCP
states in the two principal planes (xz and yz) are plotted in

Authorized licensed use limited to: DELHI TECHNICAL UNIV. Downloaded on November 28,2023 at 12:22:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1536
Fig. 7. Simulated and measured |S 1 1 | and AR for both CP modes.
Fig. 8. Simulated and measured gain and radiation efficiency for both CP
modes.
TABLE II
COMPARISON OF THE PERFORMANCES AMONG RECONFIGURABLE
ANTENNAS WITH DUAL-SENSE CP
λo : Free-space wavelength at the lowest frequency of overlapped BW.
∗
Reconfigurable antenna with additional LP states.
Figs. 9 and 10, respectively. As shown in this figure, the patterns
at different frequencies in both planes are stable with front-to-
back ratios of more than 15 dB.
Finally, the performance comparison among several state-of-
the-art reconfigurable antennas with dual-sense CP is summa-
rized in Table II. The best performance in terms of operation
BW, which is defined as the overlap between –10 dB impedance
BW and 3 dB AR BW, is achieved in the proposed design. It is
noted that fewer p-i-n diodes or switches were used in [3] and
[7], however, with lower performance.
Authorized licensed use limited to: DELHI TECHNICAL UNIV. Downloaded on November 28,2023 at 12:22:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 8, AUGUST 2018
Fig. 9. Simulated and measured radiation patterns of RHCP state. (a) 1.2
GHz. (b) 1.8 GHz.
Fig. 10. Simulated and measured radiation patterns of LHCP state. (a) 1.2
GHz. (b) 1.8 GHz.
V. CONCLUSION
The role of biasing circuit as parasitic elements to improve
an antenna’s performance has been investigated. To that end, a
simple design of wideband polarization-reconfigurable antenna
has been proposed. The antenna is able to switch polarization
between RHCP and LHCP by manipulating the ON/OFF states
of the four p-i-n diodes with low-cost and simple design of
the dc biasing circuit. The antenna exhibits a wide 3 dB AR
BW of 58.9% (1.1–2.02 GHz) and impedance BW of 53.3%
(1.1–1.9 GHz) for both CP realization states. The general con-
cept is beneficial for investigation in other reconfigurable anten-
nas where parasitic elements can be used as a means to improve
the performance.
TRAN et al.: BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT UTILIZING BIAS CIRCUIT AS PARASITIC ELEMENTS IN A RECONFIGURABLE CP ANTENNA
REFERENCES
[1] P. Y. Qin, A. R. Weily, Y. J. Guo, and C.-H. Liang, “Polarization recon-
figurable U-slot patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58,
no. 10, pp. 3383–3388, Oct. 2010.
[2] A. Khidre, K. F. Lee, F. Yang, and A. Z. Elsherbeni, “Circular polarization
reconfigurable wideband E-shaped patch antenna for wireless applica-
tions,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 960–964, Feb.
2013.
[3] Z. X. Yang, H. C. Yang, J. S. Hong, and Y. Li, “Bandwidth enhancement of
a polarization-reconfigurable patch antenna with stair-slots on the ground,”
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 13, pp. 579–582, 2014.
[4] W. Li et al., “Polarization-reconfigurable circularly polarized planar an-
tenna using switchable polarizer,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 65,
no. 9, pp. 4470–4477, Sep. 2017.
[5] S. L. S. Yang and K. M. Luk, “A wideband L-probes fed circularly-
polarized reconfigurable microstrip patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propag., vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 581–584, Feb. 2008.
[6] W. Lin and H. Wong, “Wideband circular-polarization reconfigurable an-
tenna with L-shaped feeding probes,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag.
Lett., vol. 16, pp. 2114–2117, 2017.
[7] J. M. Kovitz, H. Rajagopalan, and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Design and imple-
mentation of broadband MEMS RHCP/LHCP reconfigurable arrays using
rotated E-shaped patch elements,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 63,
no. 6, pp. 2497–2507, Jun. 2015.
[8] F. Wu and K. M. Luk, “A reconfigurable magneto-electric dipole antenna
using bent cross-dipole feed for polarization diversity,” IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 16, pp. 412–415, 2017.
[9] F. Wu and K. M. Luk, “Single-port reconfigurable magneto-electric dipole
antenna with quad-polarization diversity,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
vol. 65, no. 5, pp. 2289–2296, May 2017.
[10] Y. Shi, Y. Cai, X. F. Zhang, and K. Kang, “A simple tri-polarization
reconfigurable magneto-electric dipole antenna,” IEEE Antennas Wireless
Propag. Lett., vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 291–294, Feb. 2018.
[11] W. S. Yoon, S. M. Han, J. W. Baik, S. Pyo, J. Lee, and Y. S. Kim, “Crossed
dipole antenna with switchable circular polarization sense,” Electron. Lett.,
vol. 45, no. 14, pp. 717–718, Jul. 2009.
Authorized licensed use limited to: DELHI TECHNICAL UNIV. Downloaded on November 28,2023 at 12:22:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1537
[12] H. H. Tran, N. Nguyen-Trong, T. T. Le, and H. C. Park, “Wideband and
multipolarization reconfigurable crossed bowtie dipole antenna,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 65, no. 12, pp. 6968–6975, Dec. 2017.
[13] J. S. Row and Y. H. Wei, “Wideband reconfigurable crossed-dipole antenna
with quad-polarization diversity,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 66,
no. 4, pp. 2090–2094, Apr. 2018.
[14] W. Lin, S. L. Chen, R. W. Ziolkowski, and Y. J. Guo, “Reconfigurable,
wideband, low-profile, circularly polarized antenna and array enabled by
artificial magnetic conductor ground,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol.
66, no. 3, pp. 1564–1569, Mar. 2018.
[15] T. K. Nguyen, H. H. Tran, and N. Nguyen-Trong, “A wideband dual-
cavity-backed circularly polarized crossed dipole antenna,” IEEE Anten-
nas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 16, pp. 3135–3138, 2017.
[16] J. W. Baik, T. H. Lee, S. Pyo, S. M. Han, J. Jeong, and Y. S. Kim, “Broad-
band circularly polarized crossed dipole with parasitic loop resonators and
its arrays,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 80–88, Jan.
2011.
[17] D. Wu, Z. Y. Zhang, L. Ji, L. Yang, G. Fu, and Z. Shi, “Wideband
circularly polarized cross bowtie dipole antenna with axial-ratio band-
width enhancement,” Prog. Electromagn. Res. C, vol. 72, pp. 65–72,
2017.
[18] H. H. Tran, I. Park, and T. K. Nguyen, “Circularly polarized bandwidthen-
hanced crossed dipole antenna with a simple single parasitic element,”
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 16, pp. 1776–1779, 2017.
[19] G. Feng, L. Chen, X. Wang, X. Xue, and X. Shi, “Broadband circularly
polarized crossed bowtie dipole antenna loaded with parasitic elements,”
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 17, pp. 114–117, 2018.
[20] W. J. Yang, Y. M. Pan, and S. Y. Zheng, “A low-profile wideband cir-
cularly polarized crossed-dipole antenna with wide axial-ratio and gain
beamwidths,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 66, no. 7, pp. 3346–
3353, Jul. 2018.
[21] J. W. Baik, K. J. Lee, W. S. Yoon, T. H. Lee, and Y. S. Kim, “Circularly
polarized printed crossed dipole antennas with broadband axial ratio,”
Electron. Lett., vol. 44, no. 13, pp. 785–786, Jun. 2008.
[22] H. Wong, W. Lin, L. Huitema, and E. Arnaud, “Multi-polarization recon-
figurable antenna for wireless biomedical system,” IEEE Trans. Biomed.
Circuits Syst., vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 652–660, Jun. 2017.