A design of reconfigurable rectangular microstrip slot patch antennas

Abstract

A compact of a reconfigurable rectangular microstrip slot patch antenna of operating frequencies in the range of (2–6) GHz is proposed for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) applications. It has one port excited with microstrip line feed mechanism. The proposed antenna consists of a single layer patch antenna with two parallel slots designed that can be controlled via two PIN diode switches. Two parallel slots are incorporated to perturb the surface current path, introducing local inductive effect that is responsible for the excitation of the second resonant mode. By adjusting the status of the switches state either on or off mode in simultaneously, the resonance frequencies can be varied, thus achieving frequency reconfigurable. A comprehensive parametric study has been carried out to understand the effects of various dimensional parameters (slots and PIN diode switches) and to optimize the performance of the antenna. This antenna is capable to achieve return loss less than −10dB and VSWR≤2 in multiband frequencies at 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz when both switches are ON mode while only in 2.4GHz can be achieved when both switches are OFF mode. The designed antennas have been also fabricate onto FR-4 and measured to compare the real results of return loss (S11) and voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) with those obtained from the simulations. The proposed antenna is very promising for various modern communication applications.