Miniaturized and Reconfigurable CPW Square-Ring Slot Antenna Loaded With Ferroelectric BST Thin Film Varactors

A novel miniaturized and reconfigurable coplanar waveguide (CPW) square-ring slot antenna is presented in this paper. The miniaturization is achieved via a hybrid approach including ferroelectric varactor loadings, high dielectric constant materials, and tuning stub for impedance matching. For the first time, nine shunt ferroelectric (FE) BST (Ba
_(1-x)
Sr
_x
TiO
₃
) thin film varactors are integrated with the CPW antenna structure achieving both antenna miniaturization and reconfiguration at the same time. The size of the miniaturized antenna is reduced to 0.067λ
₀
0.067λ
₀
without ground, and 0.1λ
₀
0.1λ
₀
with ground. The resonant frequency of the miniaturized antenna can be reconfigured from 5.3 GHz to 5.8 GHz by applying a DC voltage. Measured E-plane and H-plane co-polarized patterns are presented.