Integrating Vanadium Dioxide Switch Technology in Reconfigurable Antenna Array Feed Networks

Developing high-performance, multifunctional antenna arrays remains an open challenge, especially for mmWave bands. The primary impediment falls on the switch technology that is integrated within the array. There are few wideband switch technologies available at 30 GHz, and even fewer with reasonably acceptable performance when scaled to higher frequencies. Vanadium dioxide (VO
2
), a phase-change material, has been integrated into switch architectures to provide a switch technology with good loss and isolation characteristics that have been demonstrated as high as 280 GHz. In this paper, we investigate the possible integration of this VO
2
switch technology into feed networks to provide a high-performance multifunctional capabilities. Polarization, in particular, can be a difficult parameter to adjust if multiple polarizations are desired for a given application. As an example, this paper investigates the losses that one might expect when integrating these switches into a reconfigurable feed network that provides the phase necessary for two circular polarizations (CP), RHCP and LHCP.