Reconfigurable Antennas for Future Wireless Communication: An Analytical Review

The increasing number of wireless devices, internet-of-things (IoT) nodes, sensor nodes and smart devices has put huge burden on the mobile data traffic. To support the large user base and to enable seamless flow of information between the communicating nodes, the future wireless systems are looking for highly efficient antennas. Reconfigurable antennas are the promising antenna technology which offers the flexibility to adapt to the changing propagation environment by reconfiguring the antenna design properties to obtain the desired outcomes. This paper gives a comprehensive overview of the design considerations of the reconfigurable antennas, their properties and classification. The different approaches and methods used for achieving antenna reconfigurability are discussed along with the current state-of-art comparison. In the end, the different performance parameters are evaluated for comparison with the detailed quantitative analysis featuring the radiation efficiency, operating frequency, gain and return loss. The applicability of these reconfigurable antennas in the future wireless communication scenarios is also provided.