The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
Abstract-A novel polarization reconfigurable planar lowprofile antenna is presented. The antenna consists of an electronically reconfigurable polarizer and a slot antenna. The polarizer is loaded by PIN diodes and by changing the states of the PIN diodes, the linearly polarized (LP) wave generated by the slot antenna can be converted to either right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) or left-hand circularly polarized (LHCP) wave. The polarizer contains 16 unit cells, which are arranged as a 4×4 array. Each of the unit cells has two layers and is printed on two sides of the substrate. The presented antenna radiates RHCP waves when the PIN diodes of top side are ON while it radiates LHCP waves when the PIN diodes of bottom side are ON. An analysis of the antenna is provided by using equivalent circuits. To verify the design concept, one prototype at 2.5 GHz band is designed and fabricated. Good agreement between the measurement and simulation results is obtained. The measured results show that the antenna achieves a gain better than 8.5 dBic in both RHCP and LHCP with 70% aperture efficiency. It is also shown that the presented design can be easily extended to the design of large-scale arrays without increasing the complexity of the DC bias circuit. The advantages of the proposed design are simple planar structure, low profile, flexibility in designs, high isolation between DC bias circuit and RF signals, high power handling, high gain and low cost. The proposed design can also be applied to the design of antennas at other frequency bands.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.