Additively-Manufactured, Magnetically-Controlled Reconfigurable Array Antenna

This work explores a versatile array antenna design that relies solely on the magnetic tuning of its underlying ferrite substrate to scan the beam, tune the frequency, and adjust the polarization simultaneously. The proposed design obviates the need for integrated active components (PIN diodes, varactors etc.), which have been fundamental elements enabling tuning operation in traditional reconfigurable array antennas, but also the cause of their complex feeding and biasing networks. This array antenna can be monolithically fabricated using low-cost additive manufacturing techniques, as demonstrated by the fabrication of a single array element consisting of a magnetically tunable phase shifter and a magnetically-controlled, frequency and polarization reconfigurable patch. The phase shifter is measured to provide a maximum of 253. at 7.1 GHz. Whereas, the integrated antenna element, depending on the magnitude and polarity of the applied magnetic field, is measured to radiate linearly polarized (LP) waves at 7.2 GHz or dual circularly polarized (CP) waves within two tunable frequency bands, namely 5.9-6.5 GHz and 7.6-7.95 GHz. These measurements are promising for developing a fully magnetically-controlled reconfigurable beam scanning array antenna.