Reconfigurable printed-dipole antenna with harmonic trap for wideband applications

This paper presents the concept of using a harmonic trap to design a wideband reconfigurable antenna. The reconfigurable antennas can be used to select one of a number of operating frequency bands. If these bands cover a very wide frequency range, then one of the higher-frequency bands can be a harmonic of a lower band. When the antenna operates at the lower band, it can have a good match at the high frequency. This paper proposes a technique for designing a wideband reconfigurable printed dipole antenna so as to select only one of the operating frequency bands by using a harmonic trap. The antenna is designed, fabricated, and measured. It is shown that by using switches and harmonic traps, a reconfigurable printed dipole antenna can be designed over a frequency range of 3:1. The antenna is thus suitable for frequency switching in the FCC ultra-wideband allocation. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 48: 927–929, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.21521