Switch Deployment Optimization of Pattern Reconfigurable Antenna with Massive Switches

This paper presents a method for decreasing the complexity of pattern reconfigurable antenna (PRA) with massive switches while increasing its pattern reconfigurability. Through this method, the less important switches are eliminated. In order to evaluate the reconfigurability of the PRA, the percentage of useful configurations (PUC) is proposed. A pixel antenna with 40 uniformly-switches has been designed and optimized in this paper. Based on the simulation with MAT LAB and ANSOFT HFSS, useful configurations that reflection coefficients are less than -10 dB and gains are greater than 7 dB in one beam direction are selected. When the switch number drops from 40 to 18, the complexity of the PRA is decreased while the pattern reconfigurability is increased more than 10 times at 11.7 GHz. The results show that this method is an efficient way to optimize switch deployment and increase PRA's radiation pattern reconfigurability.