An Electronically Reconfigurable Matching and Decoupling Network for Two-Element HF Antenna Arrays

An electronically reconfigurable four-port matching and decoupling network (MDN) designed to operate at a high-frequency (HF) band is presented in this article. The network provides impedance matching and decoupling for two-element antenna arrays over most of the HF band. Electronically reconfigurable MDNs can potentially be used in full-duplex HF systems or for multiple-input-multiple-output operations at the HF band. The network is designed at the system level by a singular value decomposition method and realized by a generalized $\pi $ -network having seven reactive branches. To ensure that the network remains functional in the presence of unwanted fabrication errors and element tolerances, sensitivity optimization is incorporated into the design procedure. Discrete switchable banks of inductors and capacitors in each branch are employed to achieve reconfigurability. In representative simulations of different two-element antenna arrays and experiments performed using a dummy load across the HF band, the MDN shows the capability of providing a return loss better than 10 dB and a port-to-port isolation better than 20 dB at the transceiver ports.