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Reconfigurable scan‐beam hollow patch reflectarray antenna loaded with tunable capacitor
Author(s) -
Hajian M.,
Kuijpers B.,
Buisman K.,
Akhnoukh A.,
Plek M.,
de Vreede L. C. N.,
Zijdeveld J.,
Ligthart L. P.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
microwave and optical technology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1098-2760
pISSN - 0895-2477
DOI - 10.1002/mop.24050
Subject(s) - varicap , reconfigurable antenna , antenna (radio) , capacitance , optoelectronics , microwave , pin diode , biasing , beam steering , microstrip antenna , aperture (computer memory) , variable capacitor , materials science , engineering , capacitor , electrical engineering , diode , optics , voltage , antenna efficiency , physics , telecommunications , electrode , mechanical engineering , quantum mechanics
In this article, the design concept of an active reconfigurable reflectarray antenna has been proposed and tested. The elementary radiators are hollow patch element loaded with varactor‐diode device in which the reflected phase can be varied. This phase alteration is based on the variation of the diode capacitance which can be achieved by varying the biasing voltage of the active varactor device. By activating these varactor devices, the phase of each antenna element in the array configuration can be adopted dynamically, and consequently, its radiation beam direction can be reconfigured. The advantage of the MEMS switches is the complexity of the integration and continuing beam scanning capability. The reflectarray incorporating active elements has been built and tested at 6.0 GHz. Narrow band multifrequency shared aperture is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally. The performance of the proposed active antenna is excellent, which pioneers the design of arbitrarily reconfigurable antennas. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 367–374, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24050