Abstract
Reconfigurable antennas play important roles in smart and adaptive systems and are the subject of many research studies. They offer several advantages such as multifunctional capabilities, minimized volume requirements, low front-end processing efforts with no need for a filtering element, good isolation, and sufficient out-of-band rejection; these make them well suited for use in wireless applications such as fourth generation (4G) and fifth generation (5G) mobile terminals. With the use of active materials such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), varactor or p-i-n (PIN) diodes, an antenna’s characteristics can be changed through altering the current flow on the antenna structure. If an antenna is to be reconfigurable into many different states, it needs to have an adequate number of active elements. However, a large number of high-quality active elements increases cost, and necessitates complex biasing networks and control circuitry. We review some recently proposed reconfigurable antenna designs suitable for use in wireless communications such as cognitive-ratio (CR), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), ultra-wideband (UWB), and 4G/5G mobile terminals. Several examples of antennas with different reconfigurability functions are analyzed and their performances are compared. Characteristics and fundamental properties of reconfigurable antennas with single and multiple reconfigurability modes are investigated.
Highlights
Due to their attractive advantages such as multi-band function, steerable radiation patterns and polarization diversity, which can reduce the size, complexity, and cost of an antenna while improving the total performance of a radio frequency (RF) system, reconfigurable antennas have been studied intensively in recent years [1,2]
We present a comprehensive study of different types of reconfigurable antennas for mobile and wireless systems with simple or multiple reconfigurability functions
Bandwidth switching, radiation pattern switching, and polarization switching are the different operations which can be performed by the reconfigurable antennas through changing the antenna size and shape of the radiators using active elements
Summary
Due to their attractive advantages such as multi-band function, steerable radiation patterns and polarization diversity, which can reduce the size, complexity, and cost of an antenna while improving the total performance of a radio frequency (RF) system, reconfigurable antennas have been studied intensively in recent years [1,2] Such antennas can facilitate multiple services in a compact structure and are good candidates for use in the future generation of mobile and wireless communication systems [3]. Active elements such as switches or capacitors enable an antenna to change its operation frequency, radiation pattern or polarization by using different techniques [4,5].
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