A Switchable-Frequency Slot-Ring Antenna Element for Designing a Reconfigurable Array

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 17; no. 2; pp. 229 - 233
• Main Authors: Shirazi, Mahmoud, Huang, Junyi, Li, Tianjiao, Gong, Xun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-02-2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna arrays; Antenna measurements; Antennas; Aperture antennas; C band; Frequencies; Lobes; PIN photodiodes; reconfigurable antennas; shared-aperture antennas; Slot antennas; switchable-frequency antennas; Switches
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2781463

A frequency-reconfigurable slot-ring antenna switching between L - and C -bands is presented. The aperture of an L -band slot-ring antenna can be reconfigured to a 2 × 2 C -band slot-ring antenna array by changing the states of 16 p-i-n diode switches. This antenna operates at 1.76/5.71 GHz with a fractional bandwidth of 8.6%/11.5% in the L / C -band operating states, respectively. The measured realized gain and radiation efficiency are 0.1/4.2 dBi and 66.6%/80.7%, respectively. The antenna element spacing at 5.71 GHz is 0.36λ 0 , which enables beamsteering without grating lobes. This shared-aperture antenna is scalable to a larger array with element spacing of less than half-wavelength in both frequency bands.