A polarization reconfigurable slot antenna

A polarization-reconfigurable slot antenna, for WLAN applications, is presented in this paper. The antenna incorporates a reconfigurable Wilkinson power divider-based feed network, which couples electromagnetic energy to a decagonal slot in the ground plane. The approach, presented herein, is based on electronically reconfiguring the phase difference, between the antenna´s feeding ports, to achieve polarization diversity while the antenna is still operable over the desired frequency band. The proposed antenna is designed and simulated using Ansoft HFSS, a Finite-Element-Method based EM solver. The computed return loss, for each case, is better than 10 dB over the 2.4-2.484 GHz frequency range. A prototype of the designed antenna is fabricated and measured. An acceptable analogy between measured and simulated S₁₁ plots is witnessed. For each switching condition, the radiation pattern, axial-ratio and peak gain of the antenna are included herein.