Non Conventional Method for Beam Steering a Quadrifilar Helix Antenna

Antenna beam steering arrays have been around for many years, while beam steering is important for many applications, it is often limited by space and overall size of the system. In this paper, a design of a beam steering approach is presented that uses a tapered quadrafilar helix with an embedded monopole antenna at the center of the helix structure. The simulation and measurement results show that by varying the phase and amplitude of the embedded monopole antenna the composite beam can be steered 360 degrees in phi and 90 degrees in the theta direction while maintaining good gain. Simulations results are verified with experimental measured data.