Low-profile and wider-angle beam tilting parasitic array resonator antenna with optimized deflected ground plane on FR-4 substrate

• Main Authors: Mohd. Zainudin, Nur Ain Fatihah, Osman, Mohamed Nasrun, Sabapathy, Thennarasan, Jusoh, Muzammil, Mohd. Yasin, Mohd. Najib, A. Rahim, Mohamad Kamal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2023
• Subjects: TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/105811/1/MohamadKamalA2023_LowProfileandWiderAngleBeam.pdf; http://eprints.utm.my/105811/; http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi14040834
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

A low-profile and wide-angle radiation pattern reconfigurable antenna is designed, analyzed, and fabricated for wireless sensor network (WSN) applications, which operate at a 2.5-GHz frequency. This work aims to minimize the number of switches and optimize the parasitic size and ground plane to achieve a steering angle of more than 30° using a low cost-high loss FR-4 substrate. The radiation pattern reconfigurability is achieved by introducing four parasitic elements surrounding a driven element. In this work, the single driven element is fed by a coaxial feed, while other parasitic elements are integrated with the RF switches on the FR-4 as the substrate with dimensions of 150 × 100 mm (1.67 × 2.5 λo). The RF switches of the parasitic elements are surface mounted on the substrate. By truncating and modifying the ground plane, the beam steering can be achieved at more than 30° on the xz plane. Additionally, the proposed antenna can attain an average tilt angle of more than 10° on the yz plane. The antenna is also capable of attaining other important results, such as a fractional bandwidth of 4% at 2.5 GHz and an average gain of 2.3 dBi for all configurations. By adopting the ON/OFF condition on the embedded RF switches, the beam steering can be controlled at a certain angle, thus increasing the tilting angle of the wireless sensor networks. With such a good performance, the proposed antenna has high potential to serve as a base station in WSN applications.