A Comparative Study on Polarization Reconfigurable Circular Patch Antenna

This paper presents a comparison between two approaches of designing polarization reconfigurable antennas. To achieve this special feature, it can be realized by introducing perturbation elements into the radiating components of the structure. Secondly, it also can be accomplished by altering the feeding networks, without any modification needed to the radiating elements. Both approaches are executed to the conventional circular patch microstrip antennas. For reconfigurability purposes, the switches are placed at the specific location. Consequently, by controlling the state of the switches (either ON or OFF), the polarization excites by the antenna can be reconfigured between three type of polarization modes, either left-hand circular polarization, right-hand circular polarization or linear polarization. For the proof of the concept, ideal case of switch (copper strips) is employed in the designs. Both of the structures are designed to operate in wireless local area network (WLAN) frequency band (2.4-2.48 GHz). The performances of both designs are presented and compared, and the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed design are discussed.