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 3dB axial ratio bandwidth of more than 10 can be obtained at the two polarisation senses.