A Frequency-Reconfigurable Planar Slot Antenna Using S-PIN Diode

A novel frequency-reconfigurable solid-state plasma chip antenna based on plane slot is proposed. The radiation slot of the antenna is embedded with a surface-PIN (S-PIN) diode and fed by a microstrip line through electromagnetic coupling. The state of the S-PIN diode can be switched by applying a forward bias voltage to realize the reconfigurable radiation slot of the antenna. The structure parameters of the S-PIN diode have been optimized. The overall size of the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate is controlled at 20 x 10 x 0.35 mm. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and measured. The measured results show that the proposed antenna can realize cross-band frequency switching from 6.8 to 15.5 GHz. Meanwhile, the normalized radiation patterns show prominent reconstruction characteristics as the bias voltage changes. The proposed solid-state plasma antenna offers high integration compared with traditional reconfigurable antennas. The experiment results validate the applicability of the S-PIN diodes to manufacture reconfigurable planar slot antennas.