A Millimeter-Wave Horn Antenna with Reconfigurable Polarization

This paper introduces the use of helical polarizing topologies within the aperture of millimeter-wave horn antennas to transform their linearly polarized fields into either right-hand or left-hand circularly polarized. The winding of the helix determines which circular polarization scheme is radiated. The reconfigurable polarizer concept is implemented on a prototype that includes one helix positioned at the center of the horn. The horn antenna with a single polarizer is tested and validated to operate between 26 GHz and 32 GHz.