Design and construction of pattern reconfigurable antenna with fine direction resolution

Abstract

Recent developments in modern communication system have led to high demand in antenna as a transmitter and receiver in every electronic device. Antenna with high performance, low cost and multi-function is mostly desirable to fit into the system. Reconfigurable antenna has attained a lot of attention from antenna researchers with regards to its unique performance. Frequency, pattern and polarisation reconfigurable antenna has resolved many antenna problems in these recent years. The radiation pattern reconfigurable antenna has led to many novel designs of reconfigurable antennas using different techniques and have different phase covered. The objective of this thesis is to overcome the limitation of beam angle polarisation. A considerable amount of literature has been published on the radiation pattern reconfigurable antenna. However, most of the papers have a difficulty of covering all angles in a plane. Thus, the aim of this research is to design and develop a radiation pattern reconfigurable antenna with fine direction resolution ensuring full coverage extension on the plane. There are numerous researches conducted on pattern reconfigurable antenna showing the ability of the smart antenna to change its radiation pattern, but not many has cover the full plane. An antenna that has a radiation pattern with full coverage on azimuthal plane is beneficial for an application that would requires signal transmitted or received in all directions. In this thesis, the radiation pattern is configured by the insertion of metal rods around the patch antenna. The radiation pattern does change accordingly but with the cost of large size of the antenna build-up. The complexity of the reconfigurable antenna design has also brought to more in-depth studies on the miniaturisation techniques. Modern communication technology demands a low cost and compact design to be fitted in the wireless devices. Most of the reconfigurable antennas available these days have a drawback of complicated design which is problematical to be applied into communication devices. The experiment is carried out to attain a design of low profile pattern reconfigurable antenna with least shortfall in the antenna performance.