Dual-Band Circularly Polarized Annular-Ring Microstrip Antenna for GNSS Applications

A dual-band circularly polarized antenna fed by four apertures that covers the bands of GPS (L1, L2, L5), Galileo (E5a, E5b, E1, E2, L1), and GLONASS (L1, L3) is introduced. A lotus-shaped aperture is added to optimize the coupling between the microstrip lines and the rings. Three wideband planar baluns are used to achieve good axial ratio (lower than 2.1 dB in both bands) and VSWR (41.2%). The measured results of the annular-ring microstrip antenna show good performance of a dual-band operation, and they confirm the validity of this design, which meets the requirement of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) applications.