Orientation-independent antenna (ORIAN) with shorts

1. A wideband orientation-independent antenna which presents a hemispherical circular polarization characteristic to incoming signals such that the signals are detected regardless of polarization and angle of arrival, comprising:

a pair of vertical loops, each loop having loop elements that make up a vertical loop, the vertical loops positioned orthogonal one to the other;

a horizontal loop make up of loop elements;

a phasing module for driving said vertical loops with a 90 degree phase shift there between and for driving said horizontal loop with signals that are offset 90 degrees from those driving said vertical loops, such that said antenna presents an orientation-independent circular polarization characteristic and hemispherical coverage; and,

a short circuit used between selected loop elements to decrease the VSWR at the lower frequence in the frequency band in which the antenna is to operate.

2. The antenna of claim 1 , wherein each of said loops has four legs and wherein said phasing module drives each of the legs in each loop with a phase angle of 0 degrees, 90 degrees, 180 degrees and 270 degrees.

3. The antenna of claim 1 , wherein said loops include a number of elements, with said elements driven so as to achieve said circular polarization characteristic.

4. The antenna of claim 3 , wherein said elements are triangular in shape to make the antenna wideband.

5. The antenna of claim 4 , wherein said loops are formed by said elements arranged on the surface of a cube.

6. The antenna of claim 5 , wherein each face of said cube includes four of said triangular elements having bases extending to the edge's of the cube face and having apexes pointed towards the center of the respective cube face, and wherein said shorts are provided between adjacent bases on elements located on vertical sides of the cube.

7. The antenna of claim 6 , wherein said phasing module feeds pairs of said triangular elements at the opposed apexes thereof.

8. The antenna of claim 1 , wherein said phasing module includes six hybrids.

9. The antenna of claim 8 , wherein said hybrids drive selected pairs of triangular shaped elements on a face of said cube.

10. The antenna of claim 1 , wherein said antenna is in the form of a cube having triangular shaped elements on each face of the cube and wherein said shorts are between selected triangular shaped elements on different but adjacent faces of the cube.

11. The antenna of claim 1 , wherein said antenna is given a right hand circular polarization characteristic.

12. The antenna of claim 1 , wherein said antenna is given a left hand circular polarization characteristic.

13. The antenna of claim 1 , wherein said loops are driven such that said antenna is given both a right hand circular polarization characteristic and a left hand circular polarization characteristic available in separate channels, thereby to double the data rate associated with said antenna.

14. A method for generating an orientation-independent circular polarization antenna having an increased bandwidth, comprising the steps of:

providing crossed vertical loops having triangular shaped elements;

providing a horizontal loop having triangular shaped elements and oriented orthogonal to the crossed vertical loops;

driving said loops such that they are phased with respect to each other to provide an orientation-independent hemispherical coverage circular polarization characteristic, with the missing polarization of 0° filled in by the horizontal loop; and,

shorting selected loop elements together at predetermined locations to decrease the VSWR of the antenna at the lower frequencies thereof.