Graphene-Based Microwave Antennas With Reconfigurable Pattern

This article presents a graphene-based, dynamically reconfigurable antenna with a voltage-controlled, far-field radiation pattern in the microwave frequency band. The proposed antenna consists of two radiating patches and a planar feed network mainly composed of a graphene-based attenuator and a power divider with a hybrid graphene-metal phase shifter. The output phase of the phase shifter changes by a bias voltage on the graphene. The antenna has two operating states with different beam directions when the bias voltage is between 0.7 and 5 V. The equivalent circuit model is employed to analyze the phase shift characteristic of the graphene-metal phase shifter. Then the prototype of the reconfigurable antenna is fabricated and tested. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulated ones. This article demonstrates that in the microwave frequency band, by proper design, the graphene-metal structure can be used to realize the new type of the reconfigurable antenna, in which this kind of graphene-based tuning structure can be easily stacked with other circuits by a simple pasting technique than soldering. This feature has potential applications in flexible radio frequency system in future.