Compact Circularly Polarized Wide-Beamwidth Fern-Fractal-Shaped Microstrip Antenna for Vehicular Communication

A compact circularly polarized wide-beamwidth patch antenna is presented here. The proposed antenna can be used for blind spot detection in the smart vehicle. Miniaturization and beamwidth enhancement of the antenna are the main areas of discussion. The size of the patch becomes 44% smaller than the conventional patch by folding the edge of the radiating patch with loading slots. Due to the small size, it can be placed in the compact aerodynamic wireless devices. The half power beamwidth is enhanced by 100<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ ^{\circ }$</tex-math> </inline-formula>, and the axial ratio beamwidth is maximized by 187<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ ^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> with the help of a surrounding dielectric substrate and the metallic block as necessitated by intelligent transportation system applications. The proposed antenna can capture signals from a wide elevation angle and a complete azimuth range to cover the entire blind spot zone. The impedance bandwidth of the antenna is 410 MHz with 90-MHz 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth.