Continuous Electrowetting Surface-Wave Fluid Antenna for Mobile Communications

In this paper, a reconfigurable fluid antenna that utilizes continuous electrowetting (CEW) techniques for achieving agile radiation patterns was presented. Instead of mechanical micropump, the proposed CEW method can electronically shift the position of the liquid metal radiating element on the surface-wave antenna. The travelling speed of the radiating element when immersed in sodium hydroxide electrolyte of different concentrations and biased under different control signal voltages and waveforms have been experimentally evaluated. The maximum travelling speed of the liquid metal is about 10 mm.s
⁻¹
. The antenna operates in a wide frequency range from 23.5 to 38 GHz, which covers the Very High 5G Frequency band in the different countries. The simulation results show that the addition of CEW geometry will not significantly affect the overall performance of the antenna.