Wideband Pattern-Reconfigurable Cone Antenna Employing Liquid-Metal Reflectors

A wideband pattern-reconfigurable cone antenna employing liquid-metal reflectors is presented. The proposed pattern-reconfigurable antenna consists of a metal cone as the main radiators and eight poles as reflectors for beam switching. It is simple in design and has a wide impedance bandwidth. By changing the states of poles, beam steering can be achieved, where the effect of reflection mechanism is theoretically researched and experimentally validated. Simulated and measured results are found in good agreement with each other. A prototype antenna with four radiation modes is fabricated, which can perform 21 kinds of beam steering over a 360° coverage. It has a fractional bandwidth of 45.5% covering from 1.7 to 2.7 GHz.