Experimental investigation of a new reconfigurable sectoral antenna

Abstract

Sectoral antennas are a type of directional antennas with a narrow beamwidth in one plane and a wide radiation beamwidth in another plane. They are typically used in point-to-multipoint communications, such as at the base station of cellular systems [1]. To improve the functionality and enhance the transmission quality in hostile environments, the pattern-reconfiguration characteristic is widely added to the base station antenna. This also allows to save energy by directing the desired signal toward the appropriate user [2]. Recently, sectoral antennas have been designed using an array of woodpile Electromagnetic BandGap (EBG) [3], a metallic EBG structure with dual band [4] or a dual polarization configuration [5]. In this work, a novel approach is proposed to design a sectoral antenna with a reconfigurable pattern using one active cylindrical Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) layer, and an Electromagnetically Coupled Coaxial Dipole (ECCD) array as an omnidirectional source. An FSS structure is a surface that shows frequency dependent reflection and transmission coefficients. FSSs are usually consisting of an array of identical elements, and they are usually used for filtering of Electromagnetic waves [6]. Their responses depend on the shape, size, periodicity and angle of incident waves. In the previous conference [7], the authors have presented preliminary simulated results about a new high gain reconfigurable sectoral antenna. In this paper, the solution for the increasing the bandwidth as well as the experimental investigations of the proposed antenna are presented and discussed.