A Reconfigurable Microstrip Patch Antenna With Switchable Liquid-Metal Ground Plane

This letter presents a novel reconfigurable microstrip patch antenna that is reconfigured using liquid metal. The proposed employs two approaches in unison to switch the direction of main beam. Specifically, uses parasitic steering approach together with switchable ground plane. operates at 5.9 GHz. It consists driven surrounded by four parasitics. All five elements are circular disk resonators. Each resonators incorporates drill hole. holes can be filled or emptied metal control behavior plane segments. reshaped adding removing additional segments which formed from To best authors’ knowledge, this first capable reconfiguring its radiation pattern reshaping A hardware prototype was fabricated and measured. measurement results show between different beam directions, namely: 0°, ±20°, ±40°. design has only 0.5 dB scan loss across switching range.