High Gain Beam-Steerable Reconfigurable Antenna using Combined Pixel and Parasitic Arrays

This paper presents a pattern reconfigurable antenna for wide beam steering applications at the 9.5 GHz band. The beam steering performance is based on the combination of a Yagi-Uda antenna and its complimenting top pixel structure. The integration of this driven antenna element with its parasitic elements is capable of providing steering of up to ±40° (at -40°, 0° and +40°). However, with the added combination of a reconfigurable pixel array on top, the steering angle of the antenna can then be improved to -45°, 0° and +45°, and with measured gains of between 6.5 and 7.5 dBi. A factor critical in enabling the added beam steering capability is the control of the mutual coupling within the bottom antenna array and the top pixel layer. Results indicate that the proposed antenna could be useful for X-Band radar and other applications that require beam steering.