Reconfigurable truncated rhombus-like microstrip slotted antenna with parasitic elements

This paper presents a novel structure of reconfigurable microstrip patch antenna by using aperture-coupled feeding technique. The proposed antenna design has a rhombus-like patch shape embedded with unique patch slots and truncated edges. In contrast with conventional antennas which operate at one frequency with one beam direction in a single antenna, this reconfigurable antenna is able to operate at two different frequency modes, F₁ and F₂ with three different steerable beams respectively. The design of the antenna emphasizes on these two techniques; slotted patch and parasitic elements. The introduction of different orientation of slots embedded on the radiating patch has resulted in two different operating frequencies, 5.3 GHz and 5.9 GHz. The size of the slot and its orientations in x-axis and y-axis affected the excitations of the resonant frequency. Therefore, the proposed antenna has the same patch size although two different frequencies are achieved. Thus, it is an advantage on the lower frequency to reduce the size of the patch which normally requires bigger patch size. On top of that, the application of parasitic elements on top and bottom of the patch enables the antenna to steer its beams to different angles at two different frequency modes, F₁ mode = 5.3 GHz (0°, +10° and -10°) and F₂ mode = 5.9 GHz (0°, +20°,-20°).