A Pattern-Reconfigurable Antenna With Vertical Polarization For 5G Indoor Access Points

This paper presents a vertically-polarized pattern-reconfigurable antenna for use in 5G indoor access points. The proposed design is comprised of a printed monopole loaded with four parasitic strips which are connected or disconnected from the ground plane (GND) by switching ON/OFF modes of pm diodes. By moderating connection/disconnection between the strips and GND the antenna obtains an omnidirectional and multibeam endfire radiation patterns. To enhance the impedance matching, a ring slot is etched on the GND. For verification, an antenna prototype operating at 3.6 GHz has been fabricated and measured. The prototype achieves an overlapped bandwidth from 3.20 to 3 85 GHz (18%) for all operating modes which cover 5G n77/n78 bands. For the far field, the antenna yields switched beam flexibility in the full azimuth plane. With the features of simple configuration, broadband and pattern reconfigurability, the proposed antenna is good candidate for use in 5G indoor access points.