Abstract:To meet the design requirements of the miniaturization and circular polarization of ultra high frequency(UHF) band radio frequency identification(RFID) reader, a novel compact square quadrifilar spiral antenna with righthand circular polarization is presented. The antenna is composed of four invertedF elements printed on the FR4 substrate, and the dimension of the antenna can be effectively reduced by array element bending and the continuous phase rotation method. The improved microstrip powerdivided feeding network and a new coupling match method are used to improve the bandwidth of the axial ratio and gain of the circularly polarized antenna. The proposed antenna has a size of 56 mm×56 mm×8 mm than the reference design reduced by 12.9% to 86%, the 3 dB beamwidth of more than 120°, the peak gain of 2.8 dBic with the axial ratio under 2 dB and the cross polarization of less than -15 dB.