Backfire radiation from a monofilar helix with a small ground plane

Numerical analysis of a helical antenna is made in the presence of a finite-grid ground plane. It is found that the transition from forward-fire radiation to backfire radiation occurs as the ground-plane diameter is reduced to the order of the helix diameter. The investigation of the backfire helix with a small ground plane shows that a circularly polarized wave is radiated over a frequency range of more than 1 to 1.3. An application of the backfire helix to primary feed for a paraboloidal reflector is also described, in which the far-field pattern is evaluated by the physical-optics approximation