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New Publication: A gain-enhanced reconfigurable radiation array with mechanically driven system and directive elements
From: Date: 2022-07-25 In the modern wireless communication system, antennas are required to be reconfigurable in terms of size according to changing application scenarios. However, conventional antennas with constant phase distributions cannot achieve enhanced gains in different reconfigurable sizes. For this problem, through interdisciplinary cooperation between the team of Professor Yan Chen from the school of mechanical engineering of Tianjin University and the team of Professor Kaixue Ma from the school of microelectronics of Tianjin University, we propose a mechanically deployable frame with only one degree of freedom (DOF) to realize the size and phase distribution reconfiguration simultaneously. In this paper, we ultimately propose a gain-enhanced reconfigurable radiation array (RRA) based on miniaturized elements and a mechanically reconfigurable system to obtain gain-enhanced antennas in both compact and deployed states. First, the theoretical model of the proposed RRA is proposed and analyzed theoretically. In summary, the enhanced gain is achieved by balancing the beamwidth and sidelobes. It can be concluded that an enhanced-gain RRA can be achieved with an out-of-phase center element in the compact state and an in-phase center element in the deployed state (Fig. 1). Fig.1 Theoretical model of the proposed RRA. (a) Compact state; (b) deployed state. To realize the simultaneous reconfiguration of size and phase distribution, based on the geometry and motion coordination of planar mechanism network, a one-DOF reconfigurable frame system is constructed as shown in Fig. 2. When the array size is doubled or halved, the 180° phase switching between the central element and the corner elements is realized simultaneously (Video 1). Fig.2 One-DOF reconfigurable frame system
Video 1 Secondly, through the innovative design of mechanical framework system, an expanded 2 × 2 RRA is constructed based on 13 electromagnetic elements (Fig. 3), which ensures that the synchronous control process of large array is still single degree of freedom without physical interference (Video 2). Fig.3 The expanded 2 × 2 RRA
Video 2 The miniaturized elements are fixed on the mechanical framework, and Fig. 4 shows the physical model and measurement results of RRA and its expanded array. The measured gain of a single RRA is 11.66 dBi and 12.25 dBi in compact state and depolyed state, respectively. The measured gain of 2 × 2 RRA is 14.62 dBi and 16.34 dBi in compact state and depolyed state, respectively. The simulation results are in good agreement with the measured results. Moreover, compared with the single RRA, the gain of 2 × 2 array is significantly improved in both states. Fig. 4 The physical model and measurement results This work was published online by Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering on June 30, 2022. The proposed one-DOF gain-enhanced RRA and its expanded array can achieve higher gain in other frequency regions (such as terahertz and quasi-optical bands), which provides a new way for the design of reconfigurable communication systems.
Sadiq A#, Gu Y#, Luo Y, Chen Y*, Ma K*. A gain-enhanced reconfigurable radiation array with mechanically driven system and directive elements. Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering, 2022, 17(4): 60. |
