Liquid Metal Bandwidth-Reconfigurable Antenna

This letter shows how slugs of liquid metal can be used to connect/disconnect large areas of metalization and achieve a radiation performance not possible by using conventional switches. The proposed antenna can switch its operating bandwidth between ultrawideband and narrowband by connecting/discon...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters 2020-01, Vol.19 (1), p.218-222
Main Authors: Alqurashi, Khaled Yahya, Kelly, James R., Wang, Zhengpeng, Crean, Carol, Mittra, Raj, Khalily, Mohsen, Gao, Yue
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antenna measurements
Antenna radiation patterns
Antennas
Bandwidth reconfiguration
Bandwidths
Boresights
Casting
Cognitive radio
cognitive radio (CR)
Electric contacts
Ground plane
liquid metal
Liquid metals
Liquids
Metals
microstrip antenna
Microstrip antennas
monopole antenna
Narrowband
Patch antennas
Radiators
reconfigurable antennas
Slugs
spectrum aggregation
Switches
Ultra wideband antennas
Ultrawideband
ultrawideband (UWB) antennas
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Summary:This letter shows how slugs of liquid metal can be used to connect/disconnect large areas of metalization and achieve a radiation performance not possible by using conventional switches. The proposed antenna can switch its operating bandwidth between ultrawideband and narrowband by connecting/disconnecting the ground plane for the feedline from that of the radiator. This could be achieved by using conventional semiconductor switches. However, such switches provide point-like contacts. Consequently, there are gaps in electrical contact between the switches. Surface currents, flowing around these gaps, lead to significant back radiation. In this letter, the slugs of a liquid metal are used to completely fill the gaps. This significantly reduces the back radiation, increases the bore-sight gain, and produces a pattern identical to that of a conventional microstrip patch antenna. Specifically, the realized gain and total efficiency are increased by 2 dBi and 24%, respectively. The antenna has potential applications in wireless systems employing cognitive radio (CR) and spectrum aggregation.
ISSN:1536-1225
1548-5757
DOI:10.1109/LAWP.2019.2959879