A Thick Origami Reconfigurable and Packable Patch Array With Enhanced Beam Steering

This article presents the first foldable thick-origami based antenna array made of a single nonflexible (rigid) printed circuit board (PCB), which can be easily fabricated using a standard milling machine. The foldability of the design is achieved using a surrogate hinge architecture that allows the array to fold in a range of almost 360°, without showing any mechanical or electromagnetic (EM) failure even after 5000 folding cycles of complete angular deflection (±180°). The proposed physically reconfigurable antenna array consists of four patches that are differentially fed and a surrogate hinge at its center. As the array changes from its planar to its non-planar state, it shows improved beam steering capabilities for scan angles greater than 35°. The array is designed on a 1.5 mm thick, low-cost FR4 substrate with overall dimensions of 250 × 102 mm and an operating frequency of 2.45 GHz.