Patent ID: 7667652

Claim:
A dielectric loaded antenna array element, comprising: a dielectric layer; a metallic patch supported on a first side of the dielectric layer; a ground plane layer on an opposite second side of the dielectric layer; antenna feed network connected to antenna terminals; one or more slots in the ground plane layer, coupled to the antenna feed network, for exciting the metallic patch through the dielectric layer, each slot having a narrow central section and an increased area end section at each end of the narrow central section which increases the bandwidth of the antenna element as compared to a constant width slot having the same width as the narrow central section; and wherein the one or more slots comprises of four slots, two of which are each driven by one of the antenna terminals to cause circular polarization of the antenna element; and wherein the metallic square patch, the slots are each positioned generally on each side of the metallic square patch and the slots are shaped so that nearest edges of slots in adjacent corners are separated from each other sufficiently to achieve relatively low cross-polarization there between.