Bilayer split-ring chiral metamaterial based reconfigurable antenna for polarization conversion

Abstract

Abstract A bilayer split-ring chiral metamaterial converts the linearly polarized wave, into a nearly perfect left or right-handed circularly polarized wave. The proposed antenna is intended to operate at center frequency of 5.80 GHz with switchable polarization capability. The polarization re-configurability is achieved by electronically switching of two PIN-diode pairs, which are embedded into bilayer split-ring Chiral Metamaterial. The optimized length of rectangular patch is 16 mm and width is 12.1 mm. Two types of radiation characteristics offered by the proposed antenna; left hand circularly polarized in mode 1 and right hand circularly polarized in mode 2. Measured results show that its impedance bandwidth is 155 MHz from 5.70 to 5.855 GHz for both mode 1 and mode 2. The measured axial-ratio bandwidth is 100 MHz from 5.75 to 5.85 GHz for mode 1 and 110 MHz from 5.73 to 5.84 GHz for mode 2. Antenna has LHCP gain of 2.52 dBi and RHCP gain of −23 dBi in mode 1. RHCP gain of 2 dBi and polarization purity of about −20 dBi is obtained in mode 2. The proposed antenna has simple structure, low cost and it has potential application in field of wireless communication (i.e., WiMax, WLAN etc.).