Compact reconfigurable waveguide circular polarizer

A waveguide circular polarizer with reconfigurable polarization sense is proposed in this paper. The polarizer can be switched between right and left hand circular polarization. The polarization sense is controlled by RF MEMS switches, which commute between two states for allowing or blocking adequately two different signal paths inside the waveguide structure. The polarizer is made up of three building blocks, involving E-plane waveguide MEMS SP2T switch, ridge to waveguide transitions and a septum-orthomode transducer. A switchable Ku-band polarizer prototype is designed and tested as a proof of concept. The experimental performance shows acceptable return losses and axial ratio levels in the 12.7 to 14.8 GHz band (15.3% fractional bandwidth). The proposed structure is compact and is useful for applications that require fast polarization switching.