Design of a linear to circular polarization converter integrated into a concrete construction for radome applications

Abstract

In this paper, we present a linear to circular polarization converter integrated in a concrete structure to eliminate signal transmission problem originated from the concrete buildings in microwave regime. Two polarization converter samples and a control specimen made by traditional concrete are designed and their signal transmission responses are compared experimentally. Axial ratio values which can be calculated by the ratio between the co-polar transmission and cross-polar transmission results of the proposed samples are below 3 dB and highly sufficient for linear to circular polarization conversion activity. The operating frequency for the proposed sample 1 is between 6 and 6.5 GHz with 500 MHz of bandwidth. The proposed sample 2 exhibits dual-band operation covering frequency bands, 4.58-5.13 and 6.0-6.4 GHz with bandwidths of 550 and 400 MHz, respectively. Operating frequencies of the samples are in the WIMAX frequency bands. In addition, the liner to circular polarization converter design integrated to concrete has a huge potential to improve reflection and directivity parameters of many antennas if it is considered as a radome.