Polarization-Reconfigurable Circularly Polarized Planar Antenna Using Switchable Polarizer

Wenting Li, Steven Gao, Yuanming Cai, Qi Luo, Mohammed Sobhy, Gao Wei, Jiadong Xu, Jianzhou Li, Changying Wu, Zhiqun Cheng

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

114 Scopus citations

Abstract

A novel polarization-reconfigurable planar antenna is presented. The antenna consists of an electronically reconfigurable polarizer integrated with a printed slot. By changing the states of the p-i-n diodes on the polarizer, the linearly polarized (LP) waves radiated by the slot can be converted into either right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) or left-hand CP (LHCP) waves. The polarizer contains 16 unit cells arranged as a 4×4 array. The antenna radiates RHCP waves if the p-i-n diodes on the top side of the polarizer are switched ON, while LHCP waves are radiated if the p-i-n diodes of the bottom side of the polarizer are switched ON instead. The physical mechanisms of the antenna are discussed and the parametric study is carried out by full-wave simulations. To verify the concept, one prototype at 2.5 GHz is designed, fabricated, and measured. Good agreement between the measured and simulated results is obtained. The antenna achieves a gain ≥8.5 dBic in both RHCP and LHCP with an aperture efficiency of 70%. Advantages of the proposed design include electronically reconfigurable polarizations for RHCP or LHCP, low profile, low cost, high isolation between the dc bias circuit and RF signals, high power handling capability, and easy extension to large-scale arrays without increasing the complexity of the dc bias circuit. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of an electronically polarization-reconfigurable CP antenna with a single-substrate polarizer.

Original languageEnglish
Article number7987717
Pages (from-to)4470-4477
Number of pages8
JournalIEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
Volume65
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2017

Keywords

  • Circular polarization
  • polarization-reconfigurable antennas
  • polarizer
  • reconfigurable antennas

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