Design of a pneumatically controlled frequency switchable patch antenna

Abstract

A pneumatically controlled patch antenna with resonant frequency that can be switched to either 3.05 GHz or 5 GHz is introduced. The resonant frequency of the device is determined by the dimension of the patch that is excited. To select a particular frequency, a pneumatically-operated copper-plated swinging arm is moved to cover one of two orthogonal slots on the ground plane. The uncovered slot allows energy to be coupled from the microstrip feedline to the corresponding dimension of the patch. Simulated results from HFSS are provided.