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Abstract
This paper presents a compact printed quadrifilar helix antenna (PQHA) for portable UHF RFID reader applications. The circularly polarized PQHA is fed by a feeding network with quadrature-phase and equal amplitude output signals. The quadrature-phase feeding network is composed of a 180° power splitter and two wideband quadrature hybrid couplers implemented by lumped-element circuits. The miniaturized antenna is a one-wavelength resonance type and can preserve high antenna gain. Moreover, the bandwidths of impedance and axial ratio cover the global UHF RFID band (860–960 MHz). The measured impedance bandwidth is about 34.1% and the axial ratio bandwidth covers 700–1,000 MHz. The measured maximum gain is 5.8 dBic and the 3-dB beamwidth is 168°. The height of the entire system is only 79 mm, the radius is 35 mm, and the FR4 substrate for the feeding network is only 80 × 80 × 1.6 mm3. The proposed antenna is suitable for handheld UHF RFID reader applications.