A WLAN Dual-Polarized Beam-Reconfigurable Antenna

A novel wireless local area network (WLAN) antenna with dual-polarized and beam-reconfigurable ability is developed for WLAN 2.4 GHz band application. The antenna is composed of a horizontally polarized (HP) antenna and a vertically polarized (VP) antenna. The radiation pattern of the HP antenna can be switched between an omnidirectional beam and four directional beams in the azimuth plane, while the VP antenna can generate an omnidirectional beam and eight directional beams. Then the antenna prototype is fabricated and measured. The directional beam gain of the HP antenna varies from 2.7 to 3 dBi, and that of the VP antenna varies from 2.5 to 3.5 dBi. The maximum difference between the measured and simulated directional beams is 0.9 dBi. The measured and simulated reflection coefficients of the antenna are below -10 dB for all the beam states, and the isolation between the two polarizations is less than -18 dB in the WLAN 2.4 GHz band. The measured results agree well with the simulated ones, showing a good application prospect in WLAN system in the future.