A Deployable Quasi-Yagi Monopole Antenna Using Three Origami Magic Spiral Cubes

Abstract

We propose a deployable quasi-Yagi monopole antenna using origami magic spiral cubes, constructed from low-cost paper substrate. The proposed quasi-Yagi antenna consists of an L-shaped driven monopole, an L-shaped reflector, and two L-shaped directors. These driven monopole, reflector, and directors are designed in L-shaped geometries to achieve maximum gain in a limited cube size. The driven element and reflector are realized on the origami magic cube #1, while the two directors are designed on the magic cubes #2 and #3, respectively. The cubes are stacked together using a thin adhesive film. The presented geometry of the origami magic spiral cube antenna can be easily folded and unfolded. The dimensions in the unfolded state are 44 mm × 44 mm × 132 mm while the dimensions in the folded state are 44 mm × 44 mm × 8 mm. Therefore, in the folded state, the antenna occupies only 6% of the unfolded volume. We have numerically analyzed the antenna performance and verified the outcomes experimentally. The L-shaped reflector has increased the monopole antenna gain from 1.9 to 5.7 dBi. With the addition of two directors, the gain is further increased to 7.3 dBi at 1.9 GHz.