Reconfigurable microstrip antenna with two-dimensional scannable beam

Abstract

This paper proposes a reconfigurable microstrip antenna with two-dimensional beam scanning feature. The antenna geometry consists of two parasitic patches placed along the E and H-planes of a probe-fed patch. Each parasitic patch is loaded with a lumped varactor and DC biasing network, to effectively change its electrical size. Because the main beam direction is determined by the electrical size of the parasitic patches, electronic beam scanning is allowed by changing the capacitance value through the applied DC voltage. Consequently, Two DC control signals are used for the two-dimensional beam scanning. Operating at 2.5 GHz, the antenna shows a beam scanning that ranges from 0 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">⍰</sup> to 32 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">⍰</sup> in the elevation plane and from 0 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">⍰</sup> to 90 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">⍰</sup> in the azimuth plane. The attained peak gain value is 8.51 dBi with 0.8 dB gain variation across the entire scanning range.