For mobile satellite communications applications such as the connected car, a scanning antenna is required. Kymeta has developed a novel, electronically scanned antenna technology achieved through the use of high-birefringence liquid crystals. Kymeta's technology is positioned for mass production by leveraging the manufacturing capabilities of the LC display industry.
In this paper a flexible low profile dipole antenna using a frequency selective surface (FSS) with interdigital barium strontium titanate (BST) varactor-tuned unit cells is presented. The varactor chips were placed only along one dimension of the FSS to avoid the use of vias and simplify the DC bias network. The antenna uses overlapping metallic plates that resemble fish scales as a ground plane to improve the flexibility of the multi-material stack structure. The measured data of the antenna demonstrate tunability from 2.42 GHz to 2.66 GHz and 1.3 dB gain drop when using overlapping metallic plates instead of continuous ground plane. The total antenna thickness is approximately lambda/24. Index Terms-Flexible antennas, varactor-tuned high impedance surfaces, chip capacitors, BST, Young's module.I.
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