A compact polarization reconfigurable stacked microstrip antenna for WiMAX application

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, a stacked microstrip patch antenna with polarization reconfigurable property has been proposed for worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) application. The proposed antenna has two substrate layers: upper and lower layers with two radiating patches connected with the coaxial probe. Without the upper layer the lower square-shaped substrate layer having regular hexagonal radiating patch with probe fed acts as a linear polarized antenna with impedance bandwidth for (S11 ≤ −10 dB) is 370 MHz 10.56% (3.32–3.69 GHz) cover WiMAX (3.4–3.69 GHz) application band. The hexagonal radiating patch is perturbed with an optimum rectangular slot to enhance the impedance bandwidth of the antenna. The lower substrate layer having hexagonal patch with the same probe position is stacked with the upper square-shaped substrate layer with same sized square patch and the upper patch soldered with the coaxial probe. The overall stacked antenna generates a circularly polarized band when the opposite corner of the top square radiating patch of the upper layer is truncated with optimum size. In order to generate another circularly polarized band and to improve the input impedance matching of the stacked antenna, the top radiating patch is perturbed with two slots and a slit. The stacked circularly polarized antenna generates impedance bandwidth of 12.75% (3.23–3.67 GHz) for (S11 ≤ −10 dB) with two circularly polarized bands (3.34–3.37 GHz) and (3.66–3.70 GHz) as per (axial ratio ≤ 3 dB) for WiMAX application. Therefore, the proposed antenna can be used as linearly polarized or dual band circularly polarized according to requirement.