Adapted low-footprint biasing circuit for Switched Beam Antenna steering usable in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensors Networks are of great interest for their deployment flexibility and low cost in many applications. Typical sensor nodes are power constrained to use low frequencies to achieve an interesting transmission range when deployed on complex propagation environment. To enable using a higher frequency bands, like 2.4 GHz radio band, Switched Beam Antennas can help to enhance or to achieve a similar transmission range. The switching facility may need to add a control circuitry to address adequately the antenna beam directivity. In this work, we present the integration of a steering functionality with the design of a biasing circuit to be deployed on a dipole antenna usually used by IEEE 802.15.4 standard sensors. We then compare the new configurable antenna with the former static Switched Beam Antenna design.The simulated antenna with the redesigned cells features results with a high directivity of 10.9 dBi and a 32° beam aperture that can be steered to cover 360° in azimuth plane.