Reconfigurable Antenna Array With Reduced Power Consumption—–Synthesis Methods and Experimental Validations in S-Band

The design and realization of a reconfigurable antenna array operating in the 3.4-3.8 GHz band is presented. Array synthesis methods are developed to reduce the power consumption and are experimentally validated by measurements. The array is composed of 16 dual-polarized dipoles whose excitations are provided by a baseband arbitrary waveform generator. The array is able to radiate simultaneously two or more focused beams in one plane over a scanning range of ±45°; these beams can be reconfigured at will. To achieve these radiation pattern requirements while reducing as much as possible the array power consumption, specific antenna array synthesis tools are developed. In particular, the way to synthesize two sparse arrays at two frequencies having common switched-OFF antennas is proposed and described. This strategy, together with the synthesis of uniform amplitude excitations, enables to harness the consumption characteristics of power amplifiers. This energy-efficient synthesis means that two mobile operators can share the same antenna array. Several representative measurement results of the array prototype validate the radiation performances and experimentally demonstrate the achieved reduction of power consumption.