Abstract
A reconfigurable beam-steering patch antenna with a U-slot is presented for wrist-wearable applications. The proposed antenna was manufactured on a fabric substrate and was designed to steer the beam directions at an operation frequency of 6 GHz. In order to implement the beam-steering capability, the antenna used two PIN diodes. The maximum beam directions of three states (S
0, S
1, and S
2) were steerable in the YZ-plane (=3°, 35°, and 324°, respectively). The measured peak gains were 6.1–7.7 dBi and the overall half-power beamwidth was 108°. In addition, the simulated specific absorption rate (SAR) values of the antenna on the wrist were less than 0.992 W/kg in all states, satisfying the SAR criteria of the USA and the EU.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea grant funded by the Korea Government (No. 2011-0005692). We would also like to thank to SPEAG for providing a free license for the SEMCAD X software used in this study.