Reconfigurable impedance ground plane for broadband antenna systems

We introduce a reconfigurable impedance ground plane for broadband antenna array systems. The reconfigurable antenna elements need an adjustment of the local reflection phase to operate over a broadband frequency range. The proposed ground plane is constructed based on high impedance surfaces with RF MOSFETs populated in the gaps between the patches. The transistors play the role of RF switches to manipulate the surface topology by turning on/off the switches. In this paper, we numerically demonstrate the novel tunable ground plane and simulation results to show the extreme tuning range from 2 to 17 GHz by using ideal transistor switches, while maintaining the artificial magnetic conductor properties of the high impedance surface.