Abstract
Orbital angular momentum (OAM) based microwave imaging offers transformative potential for next-generation technologies by enabling significant resolution enhancement through the unique azimuthal phase distribution of OAM beams. Existing OAM antennas are constrained by limited bandwidth, highlighting the need for practical ultrawideband (UWB) OAM antenna solutions to bridge the gap between theoretical schemes and real-world applications in this domain. This paper presents aUWBantenna designed for the generation of OAM mode l = 1, operating over 2–10 GHz. The proposed antenna consists of both a monocone structure and eight folded spherical helix wires embedded on a ground plane. To obtain the required phase distribution for OAM beam generation, the individual folded spherical helix wires are spatially rotated by 45°. UWB operation is enabled through capacitive coupling between the monocone and the folded spherical helix wires. The individual monocone, folded spherical helix wires, and the combined structure were evaluated based on S11, radiation patterns, and phase characteristics, demonstrating the successful generation of OAM beams. The design principle is extensible in concept to other OAM modes through modification of the helix arm configuration, though this requires re-optimization of the coupling and matching parameters. The prototype of the designed antenna was fabricated and experimentally tested to validate its performance across the operating range.