A polarization reconfigurable slot antenna

A polarization-reconfigurable slot antenna, for WLAN applications, is presented in this paper. The antenna incorporates a reconfigurable Wilkinson power divider-based feed network, which couples electromagnetic energy to a decagonal slot in the ground plane. The approach, presented herein, is based on electronically reconfiguring the phase difference, between the antenna's feeding ports, to achieve polarization diversity while the antenna is still operable over the desired frequency band. The proposed antenna is designed and simulated using Ansoft HFSS, a Finite-Element-Method based EM solver. The computed return loss, for each case, is better than 10 dB over the 2.4–2.484 GHz frequency range. A prototype of the designed antenna is fabricated and measured. An acceptable analogy between measured and simulated S11 plots is witnessed. For each switching condition, the radiation pattern, axial-ratio and peak gain of the antenna are included herein.