Pattern-Reconfigurable Yagi–Uda Antenna Based on Liquid Metal

Abstract

A pattern reconfigurable Yagi-Uda antenna based on liquid metal is presented. The antenna consists of a balun-fed active dipole and a pair of stretchable passive parasitic dipoles, which are implemented by EGaIn alloy embedded in microfluidic channels. The parasitic dipoles are driven at each end by two low-cost, 3-D printed media rods. Afterwards, spinning the rods at different angles leads to varying degrees of stretching upon the stretchable dipoles. Note the length of passive parasitic dipoles is a vital factor for antenna radiation reconfiguration. The antenna exhibits bidirectional radiation if the parasitic dipoles are equal in length. Otherwise, directional radiation towards the shorter parasitic dipole direction can be obtained. Based on the above-mentioned working principle, a pattern reconfigurable antenna working in WLAN band is fabricated and measured. Apart from the reconfigurable capability, the proposed antenna keeps operating in the WLAN band of 2.4 -2.48 GHz during the whole shape deformation.

Liquid Metal-Based Devices: Material Properties, Fabrication and Functionalities

“…Due to its natural advantages of high electrical conductivity, high thermal conductivity, fluidity, and controllable deformation, LM has been widely used in switches [39][40][41][42][43], reconfigurable antennas [48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], microwave devices [10][11][12][13], sensors [57][58][59][60], and wearable devices and flexible circuits [62][63][64]. Gallium-based LM can be used as a substrate integrated waveguide switch [39] and can also be used as a thermal switch controlling heat transfer spatially and temporally [42].…”

“…A reconfigurable Yagi antenna based on LM in [48] consisted of an active dipole and a pair of stretchable passive parasitic dipoles. These dipoles were constructed with EGaIn embedded in the microfluidic channel.…”

A High-Temperature and Frequency-Reconfigurable Multilayer Frequency Selective Surface Using Liquid Metal

“…Chen et al introduced liquid metal into a glass medium to form a dielectric resonant antenna and achieved +45 • , −45 • and y-axis polarization reconstruction by controlling the channel and direction of flow of the liquid metal in the medium [27]. A patternreconfigurable Yagi-Uda antenna based on liquid metal was presented by Hao et al [28]. The liquid metal alloy (LMA) was used to design a metasurface with switchable reflection phases, which serves as the superstrate of an antenna array to manipulate its scattering features [29].…”

Wideband quasi‐Yagi antenna with stable radiation patterns for base‐station applications

“…With the rapid development of wireless communication technology, coexisting systems with multiple standards such as 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G mobile communication have become a common demand. Therefore, wideband antennas covering multi‐standard frequency bands have been dawning tremendous attention 1 . The quasi‐Yagi antenna is a highly competitive type of wideband antennas due to its advantages of broadband characteristics, unidirectional radiation performance, and simple structure 2 …”

“…Therefore, wideband antennas covering multi-standard frequency bands have been dawning tremendous attention. 1 The quasi-Yagi antenna is a highly competitive type of wideband antennas due to its advantages of broadband characteristics, unidirectional radiation performance, and simple structure. 2 The conventional quasi-Yagi antennas consist of a dipole as a driver, single or multiple directors and a truncated ground as a reflector behind the dipole, [3][4][5] and many types of feeding networks, such as microstrip line-to-coplanar stripline with the power divider, [6][7][8][9] microstrip line-to-slot line structure [10][11] and feed structure of parallel microstrip lines printed on both sides of the substrate [12][13] had been studied to improve their operating bandwidth.…”