TY - JOUR
T1 - Liquid Metal Bandwidth-Reconfigurable Antenna
AU - Alqurashi, Khaled Yahya
AU - Kelly, James R.
AU - Wang, Zhengpeng
AU - Crean, Carol
AU - Mittra, Raj
AU - Khalily, Mohsen
AU - Gao, Yue
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2002-2011 IEEE.
PY - 2020/1
Y1 - 2020/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Bandwidth reconfiguration
KW - cognitive radio (CR)
KW - liquid metal
KW - microstrip antenna
KW - monopole antenna
KW - reconfigurable antennas
KW - spectrum aggregation
KW - ultrawideband (UWB) antennas
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85078533016
U2 - 10.1109/LAWP.2019.2959879
DO - 10.1109/LAWP.2019.2959879
M3 - 文章
AN - SCOPUS:85078533016
SN - 1536-1225
VL - 19
SP - 218
EP - 222
JO - IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
JF - IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
IS - 1
M1 - 8933056
ER -