Frequency Reconfigurable U-Slot Antenna for SDR Application

In this paper, a novel frequency reconfigurable U-slot microstrip antenna with T-shaped feed line for Software Defined Radio applications is proposed. The proposed antenna, indexed as A-I in this paper, operates at three different frequencies: 1.85GHz, 1.9GHz and 2.4GHz depending on the switching states of PIN diodes. Furthermore, to strengthen the proposed design concept and strategy another improved antenna (A-II) is designed and tested. In comparison to antenna A-I, the improved antenna design (A-II) utilizes four slots/PIN diodes in order to increase the number of reconfigurable frequency states. Depending on the switch states of four PIN diodes, antenna A-II operates on five different reconfigurable frequency bands centered at: 1.5GHz, 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz, 1.9GHz and 2.24GHz. The measured results show a return loss better than 22 dB, maximum gain of 2.5 dB and maximum efficiency of 78%. Moreover, radiation pattern for the proposed antennas is stable at all operating frequencies.