Printed Dipole Antenna Array With Reconfigurable Feeding Network for Wide Elevation Angle of U2X Communications

Abstract

In this paper, a printed dipole antenna array with reconfigurable feeding network for wide elevation angle of U2X communications is presented. The proposed array consists of a printed 8-element dipole antenna array in the top substrate, two supports with a tapered balun and two reflectors with the reconfigurable feeding network in the bottom substrate. To achieve high gain and wide beam coverage, the proposed reconfigurable feeding network consists of single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switches, single-pole three-throw (SP3T) switches, Wilkinson power dividers, and hybrid couplers. The proposed array antenna forms a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3\times 3$ </tex-math></inline-formula> beam consisting of broadside and end-fire beams based on the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$x$ </tex-math></inline-formula> - and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$y$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -axis using a reconfigurable feeding network. The measured impedance bandwidth, peak gain, and half-power beamwidths (HPBWs) at <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\phi $ </tex-math></inline-formula> =0° and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\phi $ </tex-math></inline-formula> =90° of the proposed array are approximately 1250 MHz (25%), 7.9 dBi, 197° and 100°, respectively. The overall volume size of the proposed array is <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$75\times 96 \times 21$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.3{\lambda _{0}}{\times } 1.6{\lambda _{0}}{\times } 0.4\lambda _{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> at 5.1 GHz).