A Four-Element Antenna Array System With 15 Reconfigurable Radiation Patterns

This paper describes the design of a planar antenna array system with pattern reconfiguration in the azimuthal plane. The antenna array system is designed based on four antenna units where each unit is composed of two printed Yagi-Uda elements that radiate in directional beams over a dedicated sector, thus ensuring maximum isolation with neighboring units. The various units are fed on demand through a reconfigurable structure that is composed of four reconfigurable feeding networks and a one-to-four power divider. The feeding structure distributes the required power to the various radiating units through the activation of the two integrated PIN diodes along each of the four reconfigurable feeding networks. Such activation results in 15 reconfigurable radiation patterns that cover four orthogonal sectors over a fixed operating frequency, at 5.8 GHz. Each antenna unit is designed to exhibit a gain of 9 dBi with a half-power beamwidth of 44° and a sidelobe level of −16 dB. The antenna array is fabricated and tested, where the measured results validate the predicted simulated data.