Reconfigurable pyramidal antenna loaded by a cut-off waveguide-application to ARNS/RNSS services

A novel reconfigurable and circularly polarized antenna topology for satellite application services, based on a pyramidal geometry, is proposed. Frequency agility is simply obtained by loading the radiating elements by radio-frequency switches. The ground plane of the antenna is perforated and loaded by a cut-off and open-ended waveguide. The length of this waveguide is adjusted to achieve a good trade-off between rear radiation and impedance matching. A specific application of this original topology is described in this paper. It consists in the design of a reconfigurable dual-band antenna for aeronautical radio navigation services (ARNS) and radio navigation satellite services (RNSS). The computed input return loss is lower than -10 dB in all the considered frequency bands and quasi-hemispheric radiation patterns are obtained. These results are in good agreement with the required radio navigation specifications.