Design of hexagonal shape reconfigurable antenna for wireless communications

Abstract

Circularly polarized reconfigurable antenna plays an important role in applications which requires frequency reuse and to mitigate the effect of multipath interference. In this paper, circularly polarized reconfigurable patch antenna operating at 2.3 GHz band is presented. The antenna consists of a radiating patch incorporated with a square-shaped slot at its center. Ultra-miniature switches are placed in the gap region of the slot in the radiating element for reconfiguring antenna geometry and thereby achieving polarization reconfiguration. The antenna achieves either left-hand polarization or right-hand polarization depending upon switching of the corresponding pair of MEMS switches. The performance of the antenna is validated using high-frequency structure simulator tool and the results are compared with other conventional antennas. The antenna gives a good impedance bandwidth of 70MHz between 2.295GHz – 2.365GHz in the operating band with a peak gain of 5dBi. It also achieves wider 3dB axial ratio beamwidth od 140 along with good cross-polarization isolation of -12 dB for RHCP and -13 dB for LHCP configurations at its operating frequency and hence better suitable for application in areas of modern wireless communication.