A Robust, Flexible and Frequency Reconfigurable Antenna with Flexible Superstrate and Substrate

This paper presents a frequency reconfigurable circular patch antenna having dielectric superstrate to tune the operating frequency and increase the realized gain of the antenna. The antenna is designed with highly flexible, robust and inexpensive materials. The antenna is basically a circular microstrip patch antenna having a flexible superstrate, the antenna is designed in such a way that the height from the patch surface to the superstrate can be varied, which subsequently changes the resonance frequency of the antenna. This mechanical reconfigurable technique appears to be a simple and effective method of frequency tuning operation of a flexible antenna. Moreover, the utilization of the superstrate improves the gain and efficiency of the antenna. Numerical investigations of the design are demonstrated in this paper.