A Ka-band pattern-reconfigurable microstrip antenna enabled by PIN diodes with accurate extraction of equivalent circuit parameters

Abstract A Ka-band microstrip antenna based on PIN diodes with accurate extraction of equivalent circuit parameters for pattern reconfigurability is proposed in this work. With the increase in operation frequency, the parasitic effect introduced by PIN diodes has tremendous influence on the performance of reconfigurable antennas; hence, the conventional equivalent circuit parameters of the PIN diodes are not applicable for higher-frequency applications, such as millimeter-wave circuits and antennas. Therefore, accurate equivalent circuit models of the conventional PIN diodes are essential in the millimeter-wave reconfigurable antenna design. Based on the combination of simulation and experimental results, accurate equivalent circuit model parameters for the millimeter-wave range of the PIN diode are extracted, with a pattern-reconfigurable antenna being developed afterwards. The proposed antenna consists of two PIN diodes, two interdigital capacitors, an L-shaped slot, and their bias networks. Particularly, the interdigital capacitors are utilized to isolate direct current (DC) from radio frequency circuits, which is able to improve the economic efficiency of the antenna notably as compared with conventional chip capacitors in the Ka-band. By combining a suitable arrangement of the diodes’ location and the DC bias networks, the main beam direction of the proposed antenna can be switched between −60° and 60°. To demonstrate the proposed idea, a prototype antenna is fabricated and measured. The measured results agree with the simulation quite well, with a good performance around 30 GHz and a gain greater than 5 dBi for both modes being achieved.