Broadside Beam-Steerable Planar Parasitic Pixel Patch Antenna

A design for a beam-steerable planar parasitic pixel patch antenna without using phase shifters is presented. The design consists of a planar patch driven element with a rectangular grid of parasitic pixels adjacent to and surrounding the planar patch. The adjacent surrounding pixels can be connected together appropriately by means of switches or hardwires, resulting in a reconfigurable pattern suitable for beam steering. A feature of the design is its thin planar structure. The antenna has been prototyped and demonstrated with an aperture-fed planar patch design operating at 5.7 GHz with 2-mm thickness, providing a bandwidth of 200 MHz (4%). It has peak gains of ~9.5 dBi throughout a steerable range of over ±40° in both the azimuth and elevation planes without using phase shifters. A 2 × 1 linear array without the need for phase shifters, offering a gain over the steerable range of 12.5 dBi, is also proposed.