IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 49, NO.

10, OCTOBER 2001

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On the Gain of a Reconfigurable-Aperture Antenna

Elliott R. Brown, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractA full-wave analysis based on the method of moments (MoM) is carried out for a reconfigurable-aperture antenna consisting of a two-dimensional (2-D) array of filamentary microstrip-dipoles interconnected by lossy microelectromechanical-system (MEMS) switches. Activation of specific MEMS switches allows the dipoles to be maintained near the halfwave-resonant length as the frequency is reduced in octave increments between 16 and 2 GHz. This keeps the real part of the dipole self-impedance much higher and the imaginary part much lower 2 at 16 GHz. Hence, than in a dipole having a fixed length of the array-antenna gain and aperture efficiency remain much higher with frequency than in an array of fixed dipoles. Broad side aperture efficiencies of 3.9, 6.0, 9.5, and 10.6 dB are predicted for 16 16, 8 8, 4 4, and 2 2 recap dipole arrays at frequencies of 16, 8, 4, and 2 GHz, respectively, for MEMS switches having 0.5 dB insertion loss. In contrast, fixed-element 2-separated arrays operating at the same frequencies have predicted efficiencies of 3.9, 24.2, 45.0, and 63.0 dB, respectively. Index TermsAntenna gain, aperture antennas, reconfigurable antennas.

I. INTRODUCTION EVERAL research programs have been started recently to develop electronic antennas by a new approach called a reconfigurable aperture, or recap for short. As suggested by the title, a recap is fundamentally different than the traditional electronic antennas that have been developed over the years, including the family of single-beam phased arrays, multiple-beam aperture antennas (e.g., Rotman lens), and the growing family of switchable-element smart antennas [1]. The distinguishing feature of a recap is its ability to alter the RF current distribution within a planar-radiating aperture. In the language of phased arrays, a recap can change its element pattern in addition to its complex-array factor. To see this distinction more precisely, recall that the electric (far) field from a traditional-phased array can be written [2]

(1) where ; distance (radial unit vector) between the center of the array and the measurement point;
Manuscript received August 5, 2000; revised November14, 2000. This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the Reconfigurable Aperture Program. The author is with the University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1594 USA (e-mail: erbrown@ee.ucla.edu). Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-926X(01)06368-2.

vector between the th element and the measurement point; permeability of free space; propagation constant ; element factor; array factor; total number of elements in the array. In traditional phased-array antennas, the element factor is fixed by design and cannot be altered electronically or otherwise. The far-field pattern is changed only by variation of the complex coefficients in phase, amplitude, or both. In a recap one can also change the element factor. Optoelectronic [3] and MEMS switches [4] have already been used to change the length of single-element antennas, such as dipoles. Similar devices have been proposed to change the element factor in arrays [5], but it is difficult to tell at this point which will work best. However, two benefits of a recap, independent of the core technology, should be the antenna gain as a function of beam pointing and as a function of frequency shift. The pointing issue has already been addressed through the development of a broad-side/end-fire switchable antenna based on an integrated leaky-mode/YagiUda structure [6] and will not be addressed here. Instead, this paper focuses on the issue of frequency shift and how a recap array of resonant elements can maintain high gain over a wide (reconfiguration) bandwidth by varying the element length and interelement separation to stay at or near resonance at each frequency. This does not imply an increase in the conventional gain-bandwidth product in which the bandwidth must be instantaneous. But for some applications this distinction may not be so significant if the reconfiguration time is sufficiently small. For example, with contemporary s, which is adequate MEMS switches this time would be for many communications systems. The pervasiveness of military and commercial satellite communications in Ku band (1218 GHz) and the explosive growth of personal communications services (PCS) just above 2 GHz define an interesting application of a reconfigurable aperture as an electronically-steerable antenna that can link to space-based or terrestrial transceivers. This application will define the specific frequency range and other parameters in the simulation described below. II. CANDIDATE ARCHITECTURE The primary purpose of this paper is to analyze the gain and impedance characteristics of a recap antenna in comparison to the diffraction limit and to a fixed-element antenna having identical architecture and materials properties, but lacking the reconfigurability. To facilitate the analysis, the simple recap architecture shown in Fig. 1(a) was chosen. It consists of a square latrectangular microstrip elements, each having tice of

0018926X/01$10.00 2001 IEEE

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(a)

(b)

Fig. 1. Recap architecture consisting of microstrip elements that can be connected by MEMS switches or to a balanced transmission line to form an array of ) configuration where the gaps between microstrip elements are alternately opened and connected to a planar-dipole antennas. (a) Maximum-frequency (f balanced line to form an array of approximately  =2-long,  =2-spaced dipoles. (b) First subharmonic configuration where 50% of the gaps are closed (by a =2. MEMS switch), 25% are opened, and 25% connected to a balanced line to form an array  =2-long,  =2-spaced dipoles at f

length along the -axis and filamentary width (i.e., ) along the -axis, and each separated from its neighbors along ). Located at the -axis by an infinitesimal gap (i.e., each gap is a series-connected MEMS switch and a shunt connected balanced transmission line. The figure shows a top view of this array in the maximum-frequency configuration in which all the MEMS switches are left open and every other gap is coupled to RF so that the radiating aperture consists of . a square lattice of microstrip dipoles having length The unit cell of the square lattice is defined by the dashed box ). In principle, this array can be quite efficient and (width electronically steerable over wide angles under the condition , where is the of half-wave resonance, and is the wavelength in free space, permittivity of the dielectric substrate material (assumed lossless). Hence, the maximum frequency configuration is defined . by Fig. 1(b) shows the array in the first subharmonic configuration in which half of the MEMS switches are closed and half of the remaining gaps are driven with balanced RF -long microstrip so that the radiating aperture consists of ). Bedipoles lying on a square lattice (unit cell width cause the length of the dipoles has approximately doubled compared to those in Fig. 1(a), this configuration should be reso. Furthermore, nant at a frequency if the number of microstrip elements is large, lower subharmonic configurations can be produced by judiciously switching some gaps and coupling RF to others. In each case, the recap array is reconfigured as a square lattice of half-wave dipoles with approximately half-wave center-to-center element separation. The lowest subharmonic frequency that yields an electronically-steerable array, and the one called the minimum-frearray defined by quency configuration, is the . As the recap is configured for subharmonic frequencies, the must increase in a manner number of activated switches . described analytically by the expression

TABLE I PROPERTIES OF THE f AND THREE SUBHARMONIC CONFIGURATIONS OF RECAP ARRAY of 32 16 MICROSTRIP ELEMENTS ON A SUBSTRATE HAVING " = 2:33 AND THICKNESS = 0:4 mm

For example, , 6, 14, and 30 for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th subharmonics, respectively. The switches have a small but significant value of insertion and return loss that is ultimately an important factor in the useful bandwidth of a recap antenna. III. SIMULATION PARAMETERS AND METHODOLOGY As suggested above, an interesting application of a recap is an electronically-steerable antenna that can link to terrestrial or of 16 space-based transceivers over a range between an (3rd-subharmonic) configuration of 2 GHz. GHz and an microstrip From the relations given above, an array of will cover this range by providing a elements dipole array at 16 GHz and a dipole array at 2 GHz. At the intermediate subharmonic frequencies of 8 and 4 GHz, and arrays will be available that also satisfy the -length, -spacing of the dipoles. The characteristics of the maximum frequency and three subharmonic configurations are listed in Table I, along with the number of switches per dipole required in each configuration. and The next parameters chosen were the permittivity thickness of the substrate material. Through extensive research conducted in the 1980s, it was shown that high- substrates are usually deleterious to the performance of microstrip antennas (dipoles and patches in particular), because of their propensity for surface modes [7], [8]. It was also shown that there is always at least one surface mode present (the TM ) and that

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the amount of power coupled by a planar antenna to free space as low as practical, and by could be maximized by making designing the substrate thickness to be just below the value , at which the next higher surface mode (TE ) cuts on [9]. For the present simulation, it is assumed that (RT/duroid 5870) and mm, which is just below the TE cut-on thickness of 4.1 mm at 16 GHz. A useful way to analyze the recap-antenna performance, particularly in contrast to a fixed-element antenna, is by linear-network theory utilizing the bilateral nature of the antenna impedance [10]. The two-dimensional (2D) array is symmetric matrix represented by an where is the total number of elements in the array at the chosen operating frequency and and range between 1 and . The diagonal components are the self-impedance elements elements, and the off-diagonal components for each of the are the mutual impedances. Each element is assumed to be through an impedance . driven by a voltage generator into each Under these conditions, the complex current element is found by solving the following equation by matrix inversion (2) where generator impedance matrix (assumed to be 50- -diagonal in the present simulations); terminal current vector; voltage vector, which is assumed to have a uniform level of 1 V applied to each element of the array. To simplify the present analysis, each dipole of a recap or fixedelement array is assumed to have the same self-impedance so matrix is diagonal with all terms equal to . that the The impedance terms are strongly dependent upon the distribution of current on each antenna element. In the present analysis, it is assumed that the current on each dipole is filamentary and can be approximated by the first term of an infinite series of sinusoidal-longitudinal modes. The fundamental mode for a halfwave resonant dipole is given by [11] (3) where ; dipole width; half length of the dipole-current mode (assumed here to be identical to the length of the microstrip elements); occurs at the center of the driving gap. The impedance elements are found through a MoM solution to the integral equation for the dipole electric field, which yields the (spectral-domain) expression [11]

where is the microstrip-dipole Greens function. For a planar dipole on a lossless-dielectric substrate of thickness having a ground plane on the bottom side

(5) where ; ; ; ; . is the Fourier transform of the fundamental The function current mode on the th element of the array and is given by

assuming the

(6) th element is located at a position ), where and are integers consistent inter-element spacing. For the current given by with the (3), (6) can be calculated analytically as

(7) -coordinate system has been Note that the origin of the chosen arbitrarily at a corner element and the -axis has been chosen collinear to the dipoles, as shown in Fig. 1. In addition, the dipoles in the fixed element and recap structures are represents the mutual enumerated along the -axis, so that impedance between a dipole and its collinear nearest neighbor. Given the self-impedance expression for each dipole, the is established by starting halfwave resonance condition at and with the approximate condition approaches zero. Given the resonant iterating until value of , the width of the dipole elements are set roughly consistent with the filamentary current 10-times less than distribution assumed in (3). The mutual impedance terms are then computed using the resonant value of (and small ) as input. The combination of impedance terms and the voltage applied to each dipole terminal leads to the terminal current components by matrix inversion of (2). The broadside electric field radiated into free space is then found using the expression (8) is the far-field pattern of a single-microstrip dipole as where given by (9)

(4)

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and is the distance between the center of the array and the and in the broad-side observation point. In this expression for ) direction (

TABLE II MUTUAL COUPLING IMPEDANCE MATRIX FOR OF DIPOLES AT 2 GHz

RECAP ARRAY

(10) and (Fourier transform of current mode on where . dipole located at the origin) The resulting broad-side antenna gain is given by (11) where total incident power on the array from the generators; characteristic impedance of free space; feed-efficiency factor that accounts for insertion and return losses in the switches and ohmic losses in the feed lines and the antenna elements. is Under the stated conditions and given 1.0-V generators, . given simply by Over the simulated frequency range, traditional phased array is within a few antenna elements can be designed so that dB of unity. However, in a reconfigurable-aperture antenna, the insertion loss of the embedded switches must be accounted for because decreasing the frequency requires that the number of switches in each recap dipole increase geometrically (see Table I) to keep it at or near half-wave resonance, leading to approximate (serial) expressions for the insertion loss and per dipole of the form and where is the loss per switch. For example, at the present of 2 GHz, so that dB and for a switch having 0.5 dB insertion loss. The return loss RL of the MEMS switches due to impedance mismatch is assumed to be negligible based on the observation that several high-quality MEMS switches have already been demonstrated with RL better than 20 dB, meaning that less than 1% of the incident power is reflected from the switch [12]. IV. SIMULATION RESULTS As in many previous studies of planar-antenna arrays, the evaluation of the self- and mutual-impedance terms is a challenge that must be addressed as a trade-off between accuracy elements of and computation time. In the present work, the (3) were computed numerically using Matlab[13]. The double integral was carried out in spherical coordinates ( , ), where , , and . The integration to 500 consistent with the slow converrange was always integral [14]. The angular range was always gence of the to consistent with the four-fold rotational symmetry integrand for a microstrip dipole. of the The first step in the computations was to quantify the . As discussed earlier, halfwave resonance condition at this starts with the approximate expression for the dipole and iterates until half-length approaches zero. The resulting value of was 0.35 cm, at which 2.7 . This is rather close to the approximate value of 0.36 cm, as expected for low substrates. Given this length, the width of the dipoles was set to 0.07 2h/10 mentioned cm consistent with the rule-of-thumb, earlier. The next step was to compute the self- and mutual-impedance terms at 16 GHz and each subharmonic configuration based on (4)(7). This was always a laborious process with the mutual-impedance terms taking the most computation time. Because of the reduction in the mutual-coupling strength with element separation, only the first 16 mutual-impedance terms were ) and 8 GHz ( ). Howcomputed at 16 GHz ( matrix elements were computed ever, the 4- and 2-GHz matrix for completely. For example, Table II gives the configurathe recap and fixed-element arrays at 2 GHz ( tion). Note, that since the dipoles are enumerated starting from a corner dipole and moving to the collinear-neighboring dipole, corresponds to the neighboring-collinear dipole, correcorresponds sponds to the neighboring-parallel dipole, and to the echelon dipole. On inspection of Table II, it is clear that the self-impedance dominates the fixed-element terms because of its large imaginary (capacitive) part. However, the collinear-mu) dominates the recap terms through its tual impedance ( large (and negative) real part. This was observed in all computations of recap structures and is consistent with mutual cousurface wave, which is known to occur pling through the most strongly between collinear dipoles [7]. This is in contrast to the mutual coupling in free standing dipole arrays, which occurs most strongly between parallel dipoles via free-space waves [15]. Table III lists the self-impedance and nearest-neighbor (collinear) mutual-impedance values for the fixed and recap elements at 16 GHz and the first three subharmonic frequencies assuming no insertion or return loss. At 16 GHz both elements have the same length and self-impedance of 61.62.7 , which presents a good match to the 50- generator. At 8 GHz the fixed-element length remains at 0.7 cm, resulting in a large decrease in the real part and a large (capacitive) increase in the imaginary part to a new self-impedance of 4.0449 . This is characteristic of the large change that occurs in practically any dipole antenna at frequencies well below the first (halfwave) resonance. In contrast, the recap element at 8 GHz has increased its length to 1.4 cm, which results in a self-impedance a relatively small change. The reduction in of the recap self-impedance results primarily from the shorting

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TABLE III SELF-IMPEDANCE AND NEAREST NEIGHBOR (COLLINEAR) MUTUAL IMPEDANCE VALUES OF PLANAR MICROSTRIP DIPOLES IN FIXED AND RECAP ARRAYS

effect of the ground plane, which at 8 GHz is now 50% closer to the antenna (relative to ) than it is at 16 GHz. These trends continue at the lower subharmonics, culminating in a fixed element, self-impedance at 2 GHz of 0.01212180 and a recap self-impedance of 1.352.69 . elements, the current components After obtaining the were computed by matrix inversion of (2) using standard Matlab routines. Then the antenna gain was computed from (11) using (8)(10) as input. Plotted in Fig. 2 is the resulting gain for (16 GHz) and each subharmonic configuration in comparison at 16, 8, 4, and 2 GHz and to to the diffraction-limited gain cm) gain at the same frethe fixed-array (dipole length quencies. The corresponding gain values are listed in Table IV. The recap gain is parameterized by the MEMS switch insertion loss, ranging between 0.0 and 3.0 dB. For zero MEMS loss, the gain of the recap array falls at approximately the same rate with . Hence, the frequency as the diffraction limit, namely , remains around dB. At aperture efficiency first this appears surprising in light of the fact that the real part of the recap self-impedance drops steadily from 61.6 to about 1 between 16 and 2 GHz. However, while the real part drops, the mutual impedance elements remain relatively unchanged, as displayed through the nearest-neighbor mutual-impedance term in Table III. Hence, the mutual coupling between adjacent elements increases, and an increasing fraction of the input power to a given element is radiated by its neighbors. In contrast to the recap behavior, decreasing the frequency in a fixed-element array decreases the real part of the self-impedance while increasing the (capacitive) imaginary part at a comparable rate. This is evident in Table III where at all subharmonic frequencies the self-impedance term is dominated by a large capacitive reactance. Not only does this present a larger return loss to a 50- generator than a recap element, but it is much less favorable for mutual coupling. This point is also demonstrated in Table III where one sees that the self-impedance terms for the fixed-element array dominate the mutual impedance terms (collinear nearest neighbors) at all frequencies, making mutual coupling rather ineffective in transferring power from one element to its neighbors. Another interesting aspect of Fig. 2 pertains to the effect of MEMS switch loss on the gain and aperture efficiency. It is remarkable that no level of switch loss simulated here can reduce the recap gain to the fixed-element gain. Thus, an interesting figure of merit is the level of switch loss at which the recap gain and the fixedaperture gain become equal. Using the definitions given above, the switch loss will be given by , where the expression is the gain of the recap configuration with zero switch loss. Solving for the insertion loss per switch, one finds

Fig. 2. Antenna gain as a function of frequency for the recap array, a fixed-element array, and a diffraction-limited aperture (4A= ) with a A = 225 cm . The gain for the recap and fixed-element arrays are computed only at the maximum frequency (16 GHz) and the first three subharmonics (8, 4, and 2 GHz). The lines connecting the data points are drawn only as a visual aid. The recap gain is parameterized by the MEMS switch insertion loss (IL) that ranges between 0 and 3.0 dB. The MEMS return loss is assumed to be negligible.

. The resulting values for and 4.2 dB at 8, 4, and 2, GHz, respectively. V. SUMMARY

are 9.6, 6.4,

This paper has analyzed two-dim arrays of planar microstrip dipoles as the frequency is varied in octave increments between 16 and 2 GHz. Two different array structures were considered: 1) a fixed-element aperture in which the dipole length is conat the maximum frequency (16 GHz) stant and 2) a recap in which the dipole length is maintained near over several octaves of bandwidth by judicious activation of MEMS switches between the elements. In both structures, the . For the fixed-elinter-element separation is maintained at ement aperture, the gain and aperture efficiency are found to decrease rapidly with frequency because of a rapid increase in the return loss arising from impedance mismatch between the generator(s) and dipole elements. The impedance mismatch is associated with a rapid drop in the real part of the self-impedance and a large (capacitive) increase in the imaginary part. And beall remain relatively cause the mutual impedance elements small, there is little radiation into free space by either a driven element or its neighbors. In contrast, for low switch insertion loss, the recap array maintains a high gain with reduced frequency that nearly tracks ). This is because the switches the diffraction limit ( resonance, which keeps the maintain the length near the

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TABLE IV ANTENNA GAIN FOR THE FIXED ELEMENT AND RECAP ARRAYS VERSUS FREQUENCY AND PARAMETERIZED BY MEMS SWITCH INSERTION LOSS (IL)

real part of the self-impedance relatively high and the imaginary part relatively low. In addition, the mutual impedance to is neighboring elements, particularly the collinear term relatively large and approximately constant with decreasing frequency. Hence, the recap maintains high efficiency with reduced frequency largely because each dipole maintains an acceptable return loss and couples increasingly to its neighbors in a constructive way, at least for the broadside radiation pattern. Future research will analyze these effects in the presence of electronic beam steering. In conclusion, it should be noted that the critical choice of ) in this analysis was driven substrate permittivity ( by performance and economic considerations. Higher- materials, such as high-resistivity Si or SIGaAs, would likely yield inferior performance of the recap antenna compared to that of Fig. 2 because of deleterious surface-wave effects. However, MEMS switches are now being developed primarily on such high- materials. Hence, application of the low- substrate simulated here would require that semiconductor-based MEMS be bonded by flip-chip or similar packaging technology. This approach may be feasible over the simulated frequency range where the size of the MEMS die should be a small fraction of a wavelength and, therefore, have little effect on the behavior of the planar antennas.

[4] J. H. Schaffner, R. Y. Loo, A. E. Schmitz, H. Tsung-Yuan, D. J. Hyman, A. Walston, B. A. Warneke, G. L. Tangonan, and S. W. Livingston, RF MEMS switches for tunable filters and antennas, in Proc. 3rd Int. Conf. Micro-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems, Mainz, Germany, 1999, pp. 2449. [5] E. R. Brown, RF-MEMS switches for reconfigurable integrated circuits, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 46, pp. 18681880, Nov. 1998. [6] Y. Qian, B. C. C. Chang, M. F. Chang, and T. Itoh, Reconfigurable leaky-mode/multifunction patch antenna structure, Electron. Lett., vol. 35, no. 21, pp. 104105, Jan. 1999. [7] I. E. Rana and N. G. Alexopoulos, Current distribution and input impedance of printed dipoles, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-29, pp. 99105, January 1981. [8] P. B. Katehi and N. G. Alexopoulos, On the effect of substrate thickness and permittivity on printed circuit dipole properties, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-31, pp. 3439, Jan. 1983. [9] N. G. Alexopoulos, P. B. Katehi, and D. B. Rutledge, Substrate optimization for integrated circuit antennas, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-31, pp. 550557, July 1983. [10] R. S. Elliott and G. Stern, The design of microstrip dipole arrays including mutual couplingPart I: Theory, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. Ap-29, pp. 757760, Sept. 1981. [11] D. M. Pozar, Analysis of finite phased arrays of printed dipoles, IEEE Trans. Antennnas Propagat., vol. AP-33, pp. 10451053, Oct. 1985. [12] A. Malczewski, S. Eshelman, B. Pillans, J. Ehmke, and C. L. Goldsmith, X-band RF MEMS phase shifters for phased array applications, IEEE Microwave Guided Wave Lett., vol. 9, no. 12, pp. 51719, Dec. 1999. [13] Matlab 5.3. Natick, MA: Mathworks, Inc. [14] D. M. Pozar, Improved computational efficiency for the moment method solution of printed dipoles and patches, Electromagn., vol. 3, pp. 299309, 1983. [15] R. C. Hansen, Phased Array Antennas. New York: Wiley, 1998.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author would like to thank T. Itoh and Y. Rahmat-Samii of UCLA for helpful discussions on this subject.
Elliott R. Brown (M92SM97F00) received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in applied physics from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 1985 and 1981, respectively. He is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and is currently conducting research projects in RF power electronics and thermal management, RF reconfigurable antennas, MEMS ultrasonic transducers for biomedical imaging, shot noise suppression in semiconductor devices, and THz electronics and optoelectronics. Before joining UCLA, he was a Program Manager at DARPA in Arlington, VA. Prior to DARPA, he was with Massachusets Institute of Technology (MIT), Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA, where he conducted and managed research in solid-state science and technology. Dr. Brown is a member of the American Physical Society.

REFERENCES
[1] K. L. Virga and Y. Rahmat-Samii, Low-profile enhanced-bandwidth PIFA antennas for wireless communications packaging, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., pt. 2, vol. 45, pp. 187988, Oct. 1997. [2] R. J. Mailloux, Phased Array Antenna Handbook. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1994. [3] J. L. Freeman, B. J. Lamberty, and G. S. Andrews, Optoelectrically reconfigurable monopole antenna, Electron. Lett., vol. 28, pp. 15021503, July, 1992.

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