Design and Development of Reconfigurable Microstrip Patch Antenna Using MEMS Switch for Ku-band Application

Reconfigurable multi-band antennas are attractive for many satellite applications where it is required to have a single common antenna that can be dynamically reconfigured to transmit (or receive) on multiple frequency bands. The design of printed microstrip antenna is reported in Ku-Band for wireless applications in this paper. The planar, very small, thin antenna with coaxial probe feed of 50 Omega is first realized at 15 GHz on a PTFE substrate having a dielectric constant of 2.5 and a substrate thickness of 1.6 mm. Simulations have been carried out with the Ansoft HFSS 13. On moving towards reconfigurability, the structure under investigation the schematic structure consist of two patches, one is driving patch of dimension 5 * 5.7 mm2 and another defined as wing patch of dimension 5 * 1 mm(2) separated by 1 mm distance. MEMS (Micro electro Mechanical System) switch is applied between driven patch and wing patch. The gap between the two is varied by using MEMS switch. The switch may be closed or open and it changes the antenna operational frequency. When the switch closes, the wing patch is coupled with main patch by an inductance. When the switch opens, the wing patch is coupled with main patch by a capacitance. The simulation results show that the antenna can change the work frequency from 15 GHz to 15.65 GHz in Ku band with RFMEMS switch.