An investigation of pattern and frequency reconfigurable microstrip slot antenna using PIN diodes

Abstract

This paper presents the design and analysis of a reconfigurable microstrip slot antenna using RF PIN diodes as switching device for S and C band. Here pattern and frequency reconfigurable microstrip antenna is designed by changing the slot length on ground plane through six MPP4203 PIN Diodes. These six PIN diodes are used to electrically connect and disconnect the slot to alter the total slot length 76 mm in x axis and 56 mm in y axis. Here three switches are positioned in slot which is cut along the x-axis and another three switches are positioned in the slot along the y-axis. The analysis of reconfigurable antenna using PIN diode is done using the simulation performed on Ansys HFSS. The pattern and frequency reconfigurability of proposed antenna is analyzed for S (2–4 GHz) and C band (4–6 GHz) in terms of return loss and radiation pattern. The microstrip antenna design shows the pattern and frequency reconfigurability at 11 resonating frequencies. The proposed reconfigurable antenna is capable to resonate at three resonating frequencies (2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 GHz) in S band and 8 resonating frequencies (5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 6, 6.1, 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5 GHz) in C band. The simulated radiation patterns at various resonating frequencies shows pattern reconfigurability with acceptable gain in xz and yz plane of microstrip patch antenna. Furthermore the re-configurable antenna reduced the front end system's size and offers pre-filtering at the receiver. The proposed microstrip patch slot antenna is quite suited to be integrated with WLAN and Bluetooth devices with less structure complexity.