Int. J. Electron. Commun.

(AEÜ) 101 (2019) 27–32

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Electronics and

Communications (AEÜ)
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aeue

Regular paper

Polarization reconfigurable slot antenna for 5.8 GHz wireless

applications
L.S. Yang a,⇑, L. Yang a, Y.A. Zhu a, Kuniaki Yoshitomi b, Haruichi Kanaya b
a
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Meteorological Observation and Information Processing, Research Center of Applied Electromagnetics, NanJing University of Information Science
& Technology, China
b
Kyushu University, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A CPW-fed circular polarization reconfigurable antenna is proposed in this paper. The antenna consists of
Received 14 August 2018 two symmetrically placed inverted L-shaped slots. By using a T-type bias device to change the bias states
Accepted 22 January 2019 of two PIN diodes which connect the two slots with the feed port respectively, right-hand circular polar-
ization (RHCP) and left-hand circular polarization (LHCP) can be realized accordingly. For both states, the
measured 10 dB impedance bandwidth is 5.78–5.96 GHz, while the measured 3 dB axial ratio band-
Keywords: width is 5.64–5.91 GHz (4.7%), both the bandwidths can cover the 5.8 GHz ISM band. By using floating
Coplanar waveguide
ground and reflector board to enhance the front to back ratio of the antenna, 6.84 dBi measured gain
Polarization reconfigurable
PIN diode
can be realized at 5.8 GHz.
5.8 GHz Ó 2019 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Parasitic stubs can be connected or disconnected to the patch by

Circular polarization reconfigurable antennas have drawn lots
of attention in recent years [1,2], since they have both the merits
of circular polarization antenna (capable of mitigating the multi-
path effect and flexibility in the orientation of the transmitting
and receiving antennas [3,4]) and reconfigurable antenna (satisfy
the requirements for increased functionality within a confined
volume [5]).
Almost all the circular polarization reconfigurable antennas
have made use of some kind of a switching mechanism [6]. In
[7], by changing the on/off states of the two PIN diodes inserted
in the gap between the rhombus-shaped patch and the Y-shaped
feed line, which helps the antenna to become an electrically
asymmetrical structure, 2% 3-dB axial-ratio bandwidth for RHCP
and LHCP modes can be realized. In [8], by reconfiguring the
T-shaped feed structure connected with two PIN diodes to the
ground plane, either RHCP or LHCP is fulfilled. The antenna
required multi-layer structure and has a 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth
of 2.27%. In [9], antenna’s polarization state is altered by position-
ing the PIN diodes appropriately to change the length of the U-slot
arms, the final 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth is greater than 2.8%.
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ylsinchina@163.com (L.S. Yang).
changing the working status of the diodes [10]. And the polariza-
tion reconfigurable performances of the antenna can be realized
accordingly. The antenna works at around 5.5 GHz and has a nearly
3.1% 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth. In [11], polarization reconfigura-
tion metasurface is rotated to realize 4% 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth
in both RHCP and LHCP states.
In this paper, a reconfigurable slot antenna with a simple struc-
ture is presented. The antenna consists of two symmetrical
inverted L-shaped slots, either slots can exhibit RHCP or LHCP
respectively. By changing the working states of the two PIN diodes
which connect the two slots with the CPW feed structure, only half
of the antenna (right half or left half) will be in working condition
and circular polarization reconfigurability is achieved. In addition,
when the two PIN diodes are both in the on-state at the same time,
the antenna operates in the LP mode, but there will be a little shift
of the resonant frequency to the lower frequency, so we will not
discuss this status in this paper.
2. Antenna design
The structure of the antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The antenna
consists of four layers. The first layer is a FR4 substrate with a per-
mittivity of 4.4 and a loss tangent of 0.02. The radiation element is
on the top of the substrate, and composed of two symmetrical
inverted L-shaped slots. The left half is designed to perform left

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeue.2019.01.022
1434-8411/Ó 2019 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
28 L.S. Yang et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 101 (2019) 27–32

Fig. 1. The structure of the proposed antenna. (a) The top view of the proposed antenna, (b) the side view of the proposed antenna, (c) photograph of the fabricated antenna.

hand circular polarization and the right half is for right hand
circular polarization. Either of the two inverted L-shaped slots con-
sist of two orthogonal placed slots:Slot-1 and Slot-2. Slot-1 is
meandered at the connection of the two slots which can realize a
near 90 degree phase difference between the current flowing on
the two slots.
How the change of the width of slot-2 affects the antenna per-
formances is plotted in Fig. 2(a) and (b). The change of W1 affects
the impedance matching bandwidth, but has hardly changed the
resonance frequency of the antenna. Compared to impedance
matching, the influences on axis ratio bandwidth caused by the
change of W1 is smaller.
The removed parts on the lower corners of the radiation ele-
ment with size L2  W 2 are used to fine tune the impedance
matching of the antenna. As shown in Fig. 2(c) and (d), the change
of L2 only influences the impedance matching, neither the reso-
nance frequency nor the axis ratio bandwidth is affected. While
in Fig. 2 (e) and (f), we can find that, with the increase of W2,
 L.S. Yang et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 101 (2019) 27–32 29

Fig. 2. Parameter analysis. (a) and (b) Change of W1, (c) and (d) Change of L2, (e) and (f) Change of W2.

the impedance bandwidth and axis ratio bandwidth shift to higher
frequencies, but the resonance frequency is barely affected.
A rectangular groove between the two inverted L-shaped slots
is used to alleviate the surface current on the common ground
and enhance the isolation.
The two inverted L-shaped slots are fed by a coplanar waveg-
uide (CPW). A T-type bias device is used to control the bias voltage
on the two PIN diode (SMPA1320-079LF) and switch the feed
condition of the two slots, When the DC voltage is positive (the
forward voltage for the PIN diode is 0.85 V), the left side of the
PIN diode is on, and the the PIN diode on the right side is off, which
means only the left part of the antenna works. On the contrary,
when the DC voltage is negative, only the right part of the antenna
functions. This process fulfills the circular polarization reconfig-
urable characteristic.
The floating ground is at the back of the substrate without con-
necting with the radiation part. By using this structure, the front-
to-back ratio of the antenna can be improved.
The second layer is a 14mm  3:6mm  0:6mm Nylon sub-
strate and the third layer is a 14mm  37:6 mm  5mm FR4 sub-
strate. Both the layers are used to support the first layer and keep
a sufficient distance between the radiation element and the
30 L.S. Yang et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 101 (2019) 27–32

Fig. 3. Function of the fourth layer (reflector).

reflector (fourth layer). Also the optimized size of these two lay-
ers can reduce the total weight of the whole antenna system. The
fourth layer is a whole piece of copper on the top of a
22mm  41:6 mm  0:29 mm FR4 substrate. This layer acts as a
reflector and can further increase the front-back ratio which is
important for wireless communication. As shown in Fig. 3, when
the reflector board is removed, the antenna can still have unidi-
rectional radiation properties, and cover the aimed bandwidth
with polarization reconfigurable performances. But when the
reflector board is attached, the backward radiation reduced from
2.5 dBi to 8.6 dBi, and the forward radiation increased from
4.91 dBi to 6.91 dBi. The total front-to-back ratio increased
8.1 dB. Unidirectional radiation can be further strengthened by
the reflector board.
The optimized parameters of the antenna are shown in Table 1.

3. Results and discussion

Fig. 4(a) shows the reflection coefficient of the antenna, the

measured resonant frequencies slightly shift from 5.8 GHz due to
the fabrication error and the parasitic capacitance of the PIN
diodes, but still can cover the target 5.8 GHz band. Fig. 4(b) shows
the simulated and measured axial ratio of the antenna, the mea-
sured 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth is 5.61–5.99 GHz, which is a little
wider than the measured impedance matching bandwidth. As
shown in Fig. 2(c), while in the 5.8 GHz ISM band, for both states,
the measured gains are nearly the same, and the measured gain of Fig. 4. The measured and simulated results for the proposed antenna. (a) Simulated
the antenna is 6.84 dBi at 5.8 GHz. and measured reflection coefficient for the antenna. (b) Simulated and measured
Fig. 5 shows the radiation pattern of the antenna operating in axial ratio for the antenna. (c) Simulated and measured gain for the antenna.

the LHCP and RHCP states. For both states, radiation in +z direction
is more than 15 dB larger than that in the –z direction.
The working mechanism and circular polarization performances
of the antenna can be further analyzed by the surface current and
E-field distributions. Fig. 6 shows the simulated current distribu-
tions on the proposed antenna surface at 5.8 GHz at 90°. As can
be seen from Fig. 6, the current of Slot-2 flows to the X axis,
the current of Slot-1 flows to the Y axis, and the orthogonal mode
electric field generated by the Slot-1 and Slot-2 in the X axis and Y
axis directions excites the circular polarization of the antenna.

Table 1
The optimized parameters of the antenna Unit:mm.

L 15 W2 4.6 Wf 22
L1 14.1 W3 9.4 g1 0.2
L2 5.9 W4 2.2 g2 0.5
L3 3.6 W5 0.9 h 1.6
Lf 41.6 W6 1.2 h1 0.6
W 14 W7 1 h2 5
W1 1.2 W8 1.9 h3 0.29
 L.S. Yang et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 101 (2019) 27–32 31

Fig. 5. Measured and simulated radiation patterns. (a) LHCP_phi = 0°. (b) LHCP_phi = 90°. (c) RHCP_phi = 0°. (d) RHCP_phi = 90°.

Fig. 6. Simulated current distributions on the proposed antenna surface at 5.8 GHz at 90°.

The electric field (E-field) vector distributions at 5.8 GHz are
used to depict the circular polarization performance of the antenna
(Fig. 7). Take the plane which is 13 mm away from the top of the
antenna as the observation plane, when left half of the antenna
is working, we can see that the electric field vector rotated clock-
wise, which indicates the antenna is working in LHCP state.
The comparisons between the proposed antenna and the
recently published researches are listed in Table 2. It can be
observed from Table 2 that, the proposed antenna has a small foot-
print size, wide 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth and relatively high gain.
Also, for practical applications, in order to obtain unidirectional
radiation, the use of multi-layer structure include reflector is an
acceptable choice.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, a CPW-fed circular polarization reconfigurable
slot antenna is proposed. By simply changing the bias status of
two PIN diodes through a T-type bias device, the antenna can work
as two independent inverted L-shaped slots, and realize reconfig-
urable performances. The measured impedance bandwidth, axis
32 L.S. Yang et al. / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 101 (2019) 27–32

Fig. 7. Simulated electric field distributions on the observation plane at 5.8 GHz at (a) 0°, (b) 90°, (c) 180° and (d) 270°.

Table 2
Comparisons between the proposed and recently published Reconfigurable antennas.

Designs Size 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth Gain Antenna structure

[7] 0:58k  0:58k 2% 3.17 dBi single-layer
[8] 0:58k  0:58k 2.27% 7.26 dBi multi-layer
[9] 0:77k  0:77k 2.8% 6.3–7.5 dBi single-layer
[11] – 4% 5 dBi multi-layer
Proposed 0:42k  0:8k 4.7% 6.84 dBi multi-layer

ratio bandwidth, gain and other characteristics show this antenna
is suitable for WLAN, RFID, ETC and other wireless communication
systems.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by * The Priority Academic Program
Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD) and
Jiangsu Innovation & Entrepreneurship Group Talents Plan*.
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