A Wideband Array Antenna With 1-Bit Digital-Controllable Radiation Beams

• Main Authors: Jun Hu, Zhang-Cheng Hao, Yi Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2018-01-01
• Series: IEEE Access
• Subjects: Electronic beam switching; low profile; wideband; stacked patch structure; digital-controllable; array antenna
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8280559/

In this paper, we propose a 4 × 4 low-profile wideband patch array antenna with radiation pattern agility. The digital-controllable antenna element is composed of a square driven patch, a 2×2 parasitic patch array, and two switchable feeding ports, which are connected to a designed single-pole double-throw switch. Due to the symmetrical structure, individual excitation at the two feeding ports produces a 1800 phase difference, giving rise to two basic digital elements of “0”and “1,”respectively. By switching the feeding ports for all antenna elements using a micro-controller unit, the radiation beam of the 4×4 array antenna can be dynamically reconfigured. To validate the proposed concept, a prototype operating at 5.7 GHz with an overall size of 3.42λ₀ × 3.42λ₀ × 0.069λ₀(λ₀ is the free-space wavelength at 5.7 GHz) was fabricated and measured. The measured 10-dB return loss bandwidths for all the states cover the frequency band of 5.12-6.32 GHz. The simulated and measured results show close agreement, which proves the powerful dynamical beam manipulation capability of the proposed array antenna.