Metamaterial reconfigurable antennas

Abstract

Leaky wave antennas that can be reconfigured in pattern and / or polarization by exploiting the characteristic of metamaterial structures loaded with variable capacitor and inductors employ a Composite Right Left Handed (CRLH) unit cell with two independent DC biases used to actively change the group delay of the transmission line and the polarization of the radiated field while preserving good impedance matching. Different degrees of pattern and polarization reconfigurability are achieved by cascading multiple of these unit cells along a straight line, a circular line or a zigzag line while preserving high gain for all the antenna configurations and good impedance matching.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 286,786 filed Dec. 16, 2009.TECHNICAL FIELD[0002]The present invention relates generally to the field of reconfigurable antennas. Specifically, the present invention relates to antennas that can be reconfigured in pattern and / or polarization by using metamaterial structures loaded with variable capacitor and inductorsBACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]The changing behavior of the wireless channel causes fluctuations in the level of received signal power. In order to limit the effect of the varying wireless channel on system performance, a possible solution is to adopt reconfigurable antenna systems capable of adaptively tuning their radiation characteristics in response to the multivariate channel. Radiation pattern shape, polarization state and frequency of operation can be tuned to accommodate the operating requirements. Different solutions employing different techniqu...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The invention is a reconfigurable antenna that uses leaky wave antennas (LWAs) built with metamaterial structures loaded with tunable capacitance and inductance to control its pattern and polarization. The antenna uses multiple CRLH unit cells that are cascaded to achieve high pattern and polarization reconfigurability. The DC bias networks used to control the variable capacitance and inductance can be decoupled, allowing for more flexible and improved impedance matching. The antenna can be excited using a radio frequency signal and has good impedance matching, making it ideal for use in high-speed wireless applications."

Problems solved by technology

Using these techniques allows generating different polarizations and radiation patterns but, especially when the antenna has several different configurations, it generally causes some of the antenna configurations to suffer of low gain or impedance mismatch.

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