A Tunable Wrinkled Ground Patch Antenna Design

Abstract

This paper presents a tunable patch antenna, which is composed of a metal patch lying over a wrinkled ground plane with sub-wavelength periodically distributed metal pins. By adjusting the height of these pins, the effective permittivity and matching state in the resonant radiation structure are changed, then the operating frequency and phase of antenna can be affected. To evaluate the method, a patch antenna and $2\times 2$ antenna array working around 2.2 GHz to 3.35 GHz are designed. The variation of operating frequency and the adjustment of 25° beam direction change can be achieved by adjusting the height of the pins below patches. This method provides a new way to adjust the frequency and phase of the planar antenna, then it has application potential in flat phased array antenna and scanning antenna.