Design of a 16‐beam pattern‐reconfigurable antenna for vehicular environment

Abstract

This article presents the design of a multipattern antenna with pattern switching for vehicular communications. The proposed antenna has four triangular patches integrated onto a split square ring (SR) resonator to operate at two distinct frequencies, viz. 2.4 and 3.5 GHz. The proposed antenna is designed with a view to enhancing the link reliability of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), WiMax, and vehicle to vehicle communication frequencies. Each triangular patch is separately excited using a microstrip line feed to enable beam steering. The ground plane of the antenna is embedded with two SR slots to improve the bandwidth and radiation performance. Further gain enhancement is achieved by loading the antenna with a plane reflector located at a distance of 20 mm from the antenna's ground surface. In reality, this reflector is realized using the vehicle's roof which provides gain enhancement up to 5.2 dBi at 2.4 GHz and 4 dBi at 3.5 GHz. By exciting single to multiple ports sequentially 16 different radiation patterns are obtained, which provides high‐gain omnidirectional coverage. The prototype antenna is fabricated and the simulation results are verified using experimental measurements. From the results, it is evident that the proposed antenna is suitable for vehicular communication applications.

Design of a Novel 60 GHz Millimeter Wave Q-Slot Antenna for Body-Centric Communications

“…e antenna maintained stable gain ranging from 7.1 to 7.65 dBi over the whole operating band. Various designs of MIMO antennas and techniques, reconfigurable, tunable, and array antennas for different applications, are presented in [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. A U-slot microstrip patch antenna for the 28 GHz band is presented in [21].…”

Pattern Reconfigurable Microstrip Patch Antenna Based on Shape Memory Alloys for Automobile Applications

“…12 Pattern reconfigurable antennas have been designed for the vehicular environment. 13,14 The combination of switches in the antenna structures have the merits of better isolation and quick response, but the nonlinearity effects cause the design process to be highly complex while fabricating the antenna.…”