Recent Developments of Reconfigurable Antennas for Current and Future Wireless Communication Systems

Reconfigurable antennas play important roles in smart and adaptive systems and are the subject of many research studies. They offer several advantages such as multifunctional capabilities, minimized volume requirements, low front-end processing efforts with no need for a filtering element, good isol...

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Published inElectronics (Basel) Vol. 8; no. 2; p. 128
Main Authors Ojaroudi Parchin, Naser, Jahanbakhsh Basherlou, Haleh, Al-Yasir, Yasir, Abd-Alhameed, Raed, Abdulkhaleq, Ahmed, Noras, James
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2019
Subjects
5G mobile communication
Adaptive systems
Antenna design
Antennas
Bandwidths
Circuits
Design
Diodes
Microelectromechanical systems
Radiation
Reconfiguration
Satellite communications
Spectrum allocation
Terminals
Ultrawideband
Wireless communication systems
Wireless communications
Wireless networks
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Summary:Reconfigurable antennas play important roles in smart and adaptive systems and are the subject of many research studies. They offer several advantages such as multifunctional capabilities, minimized volume requirements, low front-end processing efforts with no need for a filtering element, good isolation, and sufficient out-of-band rejection; these make them well suited for use in wireless applications such as fourth generation (4G) and fifth generation (5G) mobile terminals. With the use of active materials such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), varactor or p-i-n (PIN) diodes, an antenna’s characteristics can be changed through altering the current flow on the antenna structure. If an antenna is to be reconfigurable into many different states, it needs to have an adequate number of active elements. However, a large number of high-quality active elements increases cost, and necessitates complex biasing networks and control circuitry. We review some recently proposed reconfigurable antenna designs suitable for use in wireless communications such as cognitive-ratio (CR), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), ultra-wideband (UWB), and 4G/5G mobile terminals. Several examples of antennas with different reconfigurability functions are analyzed and their performances are compared. Characteristics and fundamental properties of reconfigurable antennas with single and multiple reconfigurability modes are investigated.
ISSN:2079-9292
2079-9292
DOI:10.3390/electronics8020128