Low-Profile Beam-Reconfigurable Antenna Using Multiple Parasitic Elements For UAV Applications

In this paper, a low-profile beam-reconfigurable antenna using multiple parasitic elements for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) applications at 5.09 GHz is presented. Multiple parasitic elements consisting of four horizontal parasitic elements (HPEs) and four vertical parasitic elements (VPEs) are arranged around a monopole antenna. Eight bow-tie-shaped HPEs and monopole-shaped VPEs have several advantages, including broadband properties, a reconfigurable beam control, and a small size occupancy for compact low-profile antenna applications. The proposed antenna can control the main beam by electrically switching the PIN diodes in the multiple parasitic elements. It formed an omni-directional reconfigurable beam patterns. The proposed antenna achieves approximately 4.8 dBi of peak gain and a low-profile structure of
$\mathbf{1}.\mathbf{00}\lambda_{0}\times \mathbf{1}.\mathbf{00}\lambda_{0}\times \mathbf{0}.\mathbf{22}\lambda_{0}$
operates at 5.09 GHz.