A Fast Evaluation Method for Electrical Performance of Frequency and Pattern Reconfigurable Microstrip Antenna Based on Electromechanical Coupling

Abstract

With the constant increase in communication requirements in modern society, the number and type of antennas on communication platforms have been increasing at an accelerating rate. This has led to a continuous increase in platform volume and weight, and the electromagnetic environment of antenna operating has increasingly worsened, seriously restricting the further development of communication systems. As a new communication system antenna type, a reconfigurable microstrip antenna can reconstruct operating frequencies, beam directions, etc., by changing the antenna structure to provide the good multifunction characteristics of a single antenna, avoiding the electromagnetic compatibility issues caused by numerous system antennas. At present, most of the research on reconfigurable antennas judges the influence of structural characteristics on electromagnetic characteristics by simulation, which has imposed restrictions on their development and application. Therefore, a reconfigurable antenna with a resonant frequency of 8.66 GHz and 15.26 GHz and a reconfigurable antenna with maximum radiation directions of 36.2° and −36.5° are designed in this paper, and the electromechanical coupling theory of the reconfigurable antennas is studied. The resonance frequency coupling model and the pattern function coupling model considering the structural deformation of a reconfigurable microstrip antenna are established. Within the applicable range of antenna structural parameters, the relative error between the resonance frequency coupling model and the pattern function coupling model is less than 5%, which meets practical engineering application requirements. Finally, the method is shown by experimentation to verify the accuracy and validity of the proposed electromechanical coupling model.