Deflected beam pattern through reconfigurable metamaterial structure at 3.5 GHz for 5G applications

Abstract

In this paper, the reconfigurable metamaterial is proposed to deflect the radiated beam of the bow-tie antenna at a 5G band of 3.5 GHz. The split square resonator (SSR) is designed at a sub-6 GHz band and reconfigured to produce different refractive indices. For obtaining the desired deflection angles, 3 × 7 SSR unit cells with ON and OFF configurations are printed into the antenna substrate. This arrangement creates two metamaterial configurations with different refractive indices in the closeness of the radiating elements, thereby deflecting the main beam to the direction of high refractive index metamaterial. In the passive beam deflection antenna, the reconfigurable SSRs deflect the radiation beam of the antenna by angles of ±39° in E-plane at 3.5 GHz. Furthermore, the embedding of SSRs helps improve the gain by 2.4 and 2.3 dB for the positive and negative deflection angles, respectively. On the other hand, in the active beam deflection antenna, the reconfigurable SSRs based on real PIN diodes can deflect the antenna radiated beam by angles of ±36° in the E-plane. These reconfigurable antennas have the potential to be used in 5G beam deflection applications. Both passive and active metamaterial antennas are fabricated, and their performances are measured.

KEYWORDS:

• Beam deflection
• reconfigurable metamaterial
• refractive index
• sub-6 GHz

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), School of Postgraduate Studies (SPS), Research Management Centre, Advanced RF and Microwave Research Group, School of Electrical Engineering and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru, for the support of the research under Grants (Vote No: 05E48 and 09G19).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.