Open Access

ARTICLE

Frequency Reconfigurable Antenna for Portable Wireless Applications

Shakir Ullah¹, Sadiq Ullah¹, Inzamam Ahmad¹, Wasi Ur Rehman Khan¹, Toufeeq Ahmad¹, Usman Habib², Mahmoud A. Albreem³, Mohammed H. Alsharif⁴, Peerapong Uthansakul^5,*
1 Department of Telecommunication Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Mardan, KP, Pakistan
2 School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Bangor University, Bangor, LL57 2DG, United Kingdom
3 Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, A’Sharqiyah University, Ibra, 400, Oman
4 Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul, 05006, Korea
5 School of Telecommunication Engineering, Suranaree University of Technology, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand
* Corresponding Author: Peerapong Uthansakul. Email:
(This article belongs to this Special Issue: Advances in 5G Antenna Designs and Systems)

Computers, Materials & Continua 2021, 68(3), 3015-3027. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2021.015549

Received 27 November 2020; Accepted 25 January 2021; Issue published 06 May 2021

Abstract

In this paper, the design and experimental evaluation of a hexagonal-shaped coplanar waveguide (CPW)-feed frequency reconfigurable antenna is presented using flame retardant (FR)-4 substrate with size of 37 × 35 × 1.6 mm³. The antenna is made tunable to three different modes through the status of two pin diodes to operate in four distinct frequency bands, i.e., 2.45 GHz wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) in MODE 1, 3.3 GHz (5G sub-6 GHz band) in MODE 2, 2.1 GHz (3G Long Term Evolution (LTE)-advanced) and 3.50 GHz Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) in MODE 3. The optimization through simulation modeling shows that the proposed antenna can provide adequate gain (1.44~2.2 dB), sufficient bandwidth (200~920 MHz) and high radiation efficiency (80%~95%) in the four resonating frequency bands. Voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) < 1.5 is achieved for all bands with properly matched characteristics of the antenna. To validate the simulation results, fabrication of the proposed optimized design is performed, and experimental analysis is found to be in a considerable amount of agreement. Due to its reasonably small size and support of multiple frequency bands operation, the proposed antenna can support portable devices for handheld 5G and Wireless LAN (WLAN) applications.

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Keywords

LTE; WiMAX; coplanar waveguide; frequency reconfigurable antenna

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Citations