Advances in Reconfigurable Antenna Systems Facilitated by Innovative Technologies

© 2013 IEEE. Future fifth generation (5G) wireless platforms will require reconfigurable antenna systems to meet their performance requirements in compact, light-weight, and cost-effective packages. Recent advances in reconfigurable radiating and receiving structures have been enabled by a variety of innovative technology solutions. Examples of reconfigurable partially reflective surface antennas, reconfigurable filtennas, reconfigurable Huygens dipole antennas, and reconfigurable feeding network-enabled antennas are presented and discussed. They represent novel classes of frequency, pattern, polarization, and beam-direction reconfigurable systems realized by the innovative combinations of radiating structures and circuit components

1-D broadside-radiating leaky-wave antenna based on a numerically synthesized impedance surface

A newly-developed deterministic numerical technique for the automated design of metasurface antennas is applied here for the first time to the design of a 1-D printed Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA) for broadside radiation. The surface impedance synthesis process does not require any a priori knowledge on the impedance pattern, and starts from a mask constraint on the desired far-field and practical bounds on the unit cell impedance values. The designed reactance surface for broadside radiation exhibits a non conventional patterning; this highlights the merit of using an automated design process for a design well known to be challenging for analytical methods. The antenna is physically implemented with an array of metal strips with varying gap widths and simulation results show very good agreement with the predicted performance

Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure

A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium

Low-Profile, Electrically Small, Huygens Source Antenna with Pattern-Reconfigurability That Covers the Entire Azimuthal Plane

© 1963-2012 IEEE. A pattern-reconfigurable, low-profile, efficient, electrically small, near-field resonant parasitic (NFRP), Huygens source antenna is presented. The design incorporates both electric and magnetic NFRP elements. The electric ones are made reconfigurable by the inclusion of a set of p-i-n diodes. By arranging these electric and magnetic NFRP elements properly, a set of three Huygens sources are attained, each covering a 120° sector. Pattern reconfigurability is obtained by switching the diodes on or off; it encompasses the entire 360° azimuth range. A prototype was fabricated and tested. The numerical and experimental studies are in good agreement. The experimental results indicate that in each of its instantaneous states at = 1.564$ GHz, the antenna provides uniform peak realized gains, front-to-back ratios, and radiation efficiencies, respectively, as high as 3.55 dBi, 17.5 dB, and 84.9%, even though it is electrically small: 0.92 , and low profile

Pattern-Reconfigurable, Flexible, Wideband, Directive, Electrically Small Near-Field Resonant Parasitic Antenna

© 1963-2012 IEEE. A pattern-reconfigurable, flexible, wideband, directive, electrically small near-field resonant parasitic (NFRP) antenna is presented. The antenna consists of a pair of Egyptian axe dipole NFRP elements, together with a pair of shaped metallic strips that act as the driven element and are fed by a coaxial cable. These NFRP and driven elements are designed to achieve compactness. Two pairs of p-i-n diodes are integrated into the driven element to enable the pattern reconfigurability. The antenna has two switchable directive endfire states, each pointed in direct opposition to the other. Examples of the evolution of the antenna are used to illustrate its operating principles. A prototype of the optimized design operating in a frequency range centered at 1.8 GHz was fabricated and measured. The simulation and experimental results are in good agreement. The antenna exhibits a wide 13.1% impedance bandwidth and a 4.42 dBi peak realized gain in both pattern-reconfigurable states while maintaining its electrically small size: ka ∼ 0.94. The flexibility of this antenna is demonstrated under different bending conditions by mounting it on cylinders with several different radii, and the results confirm that its performance characteristics are maintained under all of them

An Investigation of Ultra-Wideband Filters for Cognitive Radio Networks

The requirement for radio spectrum has been increasing and this has resulted in the materialization of wireless applications with enhanced features and higher data rate. The spectrum is scant, and the current radio spectrum regulation is making its use inefficient. This necessitates the development of new dynamic spectrum allocation policies to better exploit the existing spectrum. According to the present spectrum allocation regulations, specific frequency bands are allocated to particular services and only approved users are granted access to licensed bands. Cognitive radio (CR) is expected to modernize the mode spectrum is allocated. In a CR network, the intelligent radio part allows secondary users (unlicensed users) to access spectrum bands allocated to the licensed primary users with the avoidance of interference. A solution to this inefficiency has been highly successful in the ISM (2.4 GHz), the U-NII (5–6 GHz), and microwave (57–64 GHz) bands, by making the unused spectra accessible on an unlicensed basis. However, in order to obtain spectra for unlicensed operation, new sharing concepts have been introduced to allow the usage of spectra by secondary users under the prerequisite that they limit their interference to the primary users. This would start by studying techniques employed in the design of UWB filters. This study is aimed to investigate the filters for overlay and underlay CR. This paper presents a comparative study of ultra-wideband filters for Cognitive Radio Networks