Wideband Reconfigurable Printed Dipole Antenna with Harmonic Trap

Reconfigurable antennas have received a great deal of attention for their applications in wireless communications in recent years. They can be used for changing the operation frequency [1]-[6] or changing the radiation pattern [7]-[9]. In [1] a reconfigurable microstrip antenna was designed by placing MEMS series switches at the radiating edge. The series switches connect extra sections of transmission line to the microstrip antenna, thereby lowering its resonant frequency. In [2] a micromachined membrane was used as the ground plane below the microstrip patch antenna to design a frequency-agile patch antenna. In [3] a square patch antenna with switchable slots was proposed for dual band circular polarization operation. A dual band dipole using series MEMS switches was presented in [4] and a dual band reconfigurable Yagi antenna in [5]. A single-fed resonant slot, loaded with a series of PIN diodes switches, was designed in [6]. In [7] it was shown that by using RF switches the radiation pattern of the Hilbert curve fractal antenna could be made adaptively reconfigurable and also resonance frequency of the antenna was tunable by using the switches. In [8] a beam-switched Rhombic antenna was proposed. In [9] a reconfigurable single turn square microstrip spiral antenna was presented which can be reconfigurable in radiation pattern and frequency.