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Abstract:
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A parasitic layer-based multifunctional reconfigurable
antenna array (MRAA) formed by the linear combination
of four (4 1) identical multifunctional reconfigurable antenna
(MRA) elements is presented. Each MRA produces eight modes
of operation corresponding to three steerable beam directions
( , 0 , 30 ) with linear and circular polarizations
in plane and another two steerable beam directions
( , 30 ) in plane with linear polarization.
An individual MRA consists of an aperture-coupled driven
patch antenna with a parasitic layer placed above it. The surface
of the parasitic layer has a grid of 4 4 electrically-small
rectangular-shaped metallic pixels. The adjacent pixels can be
connected/disconnected by means of switching resulting in recon-
figurability in beam-direction and polarization. A 4 1 linear
MRAA operating in the 5.4–5.6 GHz is formed by the optimized
MRA elements. MRA and MRAA prototypes have been fabricated
and measured. The measured and simulated results agree
well indicating 13.5 dB realized array gain and 3% common
bandwidth. The MRAA presents some advantages as compared to
a standard antenna array: MRAA alleviates the scan loss inherit
to standard antenna arrays, provides higher gain, does not need
phase shifters for beam steering in certain plane, and is capable
of polarization reconfigurability. |
