A COMPACT HONEYCOMB-STRUCTURED RECONFIGURABLE ANTENNA WITH COPLANAR WAVEGUIDE FEED FOR MULTIBAND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS

Abstract

The design and implementation of reconfigurable antennas in wireless applications play a tremendous role in minimizing the hardware size of wireless devices. An antenna with the potential to vary its frequency of operation, radiation pattern, and polarization according to the requirement is known as a reconfigurable antenna. Here a novel honeycomb-structured frequency and pattern-reconfigurable monopole antenna has been designed. A honeycomb structure provides better bandwidth as it has multiple edges; angles of the hexagon allow for more efficient radiation and reception of electromagnetic waves and it offers a symmetric radiation pattern. It is compact, with higher packing density. A lowcost FR-4 substrate with a thickness of 1.5 mm and a compact size of 25 mm × 42 mm is used in the design. The antenna can be operated in four modes using two PIN diodes. In mode 0 it can resonate at 2.4 GHz, which is commonly used for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication, while in mode 1 it operates at 2.8 GHz and 1.8 GHz for mobile communication. In mode 2 it operates at 2.7 GHz as well as 1.8 GHz, and in mode 3, it works at 1.8 GHz and 3.6 GHz for WiMAX communication. This antenna has a peak gain value of 3.99 dBi. Thus, by changing the geometry/structure, antenna performance can be improved. The proposed design is fabricated on FR-4 substrate material, and the parameters such as return loss (S₁₁) and bandwidth are validated. The simulated results and the measured results match well.