基于液态金属微流控的Vivaldi超宽带方向图可重构天线OA

Conventional pattern-reconfigurable antennas using solid-state semiconductor switches,such as PIN diodes,usually suffer from complicated DC bias circuits,limited operating bandwidth and degraded radiation efficiency caused by switch parasitic parameters.To overcome these drawbacks,this paper proposes a planar ultra-wideband(UWB)pattern-reconfigurable antenna employing liquid metal(LM)microfluidics.The antenna is mainly composed of four Vivaldi-type symmetric radiating elements etched on the backside of an F4B dielectric substrate and four broadband microstrip feed lines patterned on the top.By inserting a polyester sealing groove between the feed lines and the tapered balun,and using a microfluidic pump to control the on-off of liquid metal in the groove,the reconfigurable switching of the feed state of a specific antenna element is realized,so that the antenna radiation pattern can be switched among four modes of azimuth plane(φ=0°,90°,180°,and 270°).The measured results show that the working frequency band of the antenna covers 1.75～18 GHz,and the overlapping-10 dB relative impedance bandwidth reaches 164.5%.In all reconstruction modes,the maximum gain of the antenna is 7.35 dBi and its maximum radiation efficiency is 88%.The antenna has compact profile and low cost,and has good application potential in UWB wireless communication system.