Investigation of Axial Mode Dielectric Helical Antenna

An axial mode solid dielectric helical antenna (DHA) has been proposed, which is fabricated by using the 3-D printing technique. Fed manners of this antenna have been studied, including conformal coaxial probe and conformal metal strip line. The operating mode of dielectric helix has been analyzed in detail. Circular polarization is achieved by choosing appropriate sizes of the dielectric helix. Furthermore, a miniaturized axial mode DHA with deployable property is implemented. Measured results indicate that the proposed antenna has good radiation performance, such as circular polarization, high gain, and high radiation efficiency. Specially, the radiation patterns of the DHA have good symmetry in the 2 dB axial ratio range. The significant advantage of miniaturized DHA is light in weight, which is only 2.7% of the weight of a metal helical antenna with similar radiation characteristics. The antenna is a good candidate in wireless communication system.