Metamaterial Reconfigurable Antennas

摘要

Leaky wave antennas that can be reconfigured in pattern and/or polarization by exploiting the characteristic of metamaterial structures loaded with variable capacitor and inductors employ a Composite Right Left Handed (CRLH) unit cell with two independent DC biases used to actively change the group delay of the transmission line and the polarization of the radiated field while preserving good impedance matching. Different degrees of pattern and polarization reconfigurability are achieved by cascading multiple of these unit cells along a straight line, a circular line or a zigzag line while preserving high gain for all the antenna configurations and good impedance matching.

主权项

1. A pattern and/or polarization reconfigurable antenna comprising:
at least one Composite Right Left Handed (CRLH) unit cell including a standard transmission line with added series capacitance and shunt inductance and adapted to radiate an electrical field; and at least a variable capacitance and/or inductance in series with the shunt inductance and at least a variable capacitance and/or inductance in parallel with the series capacitance, whereby said at least a variable capacitance and/or inductance in series with the shunt inductance and said at least a variable capacitance and/or inductance in parallel with the series capacitance are responsive to at least two DC biases used to independently control the variable capacitance and/or inductance in parallel with the series capacitance and the variable capacitance and/or inductance in series with the shunt inductance to thereby control the group delay of the transmission line and/or a polarization of the radiated electrical field.