Design of a novel antenna element for BGAN phased array antenna system

A novel antenna element has been proposed for maritime satellite communication Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) phased array antenna system. The proposed antenna element is composed of a square radiating patch, two vertical trapezoidal coupling strips and a T-junction power splitter feeding network. A dual orthogonal side coupled feeding technique has been adopted to realize a circularly polarized square patch antenna. Design concepts and procedures are introduced, followed by simulations and discussions. Good antenna characteristics are achieved in the entire BGAN working band, having input impedance match characteristics of S 11 <−15dB, antenna gain higher than 7dBi, and the axial ratio lower than 4dB.