A Dual - Band Frequency and Polarization Reconfigurable Antenna Design

Abstract

A broadside, dual- band antenna design with reconfigurable frequency and polarization is presented in this paper. The frequency and polarization tuning capacity is realized using six varactor diodes in the slots cut in the ground plane of the proposed antenna. The antenna works in L-band and X-band and can re- configure frequency from 1.576GHz to 2.035GHz in L band and from 8.524GHz to 9.082GHz in X band. It can also switch between Linear polarization and El- elliptical polarization, depending upon the states of the varactor diodes used the design. The Return loss achieved in simulation is as low as -40.841dB with im- pedance bandwidth for VSWR<2 being 429.12MHz in X-band and 123.5MHz in L-band. Due to Dual Polarization Dual Band (DPDB) with frequency tuning, the antenna can immensely enhance the overall capacity of the system without in- creasing complexity and real estate required to accommodate multiple antenna system. Thus, the proposed antenna design can find its applications in GPS, air- craft surveillance, telecommunications, space communications, RADAR, Wi- MAX IEEE 802.16d.