A Reconfigurable Beam-Scanning Partially

Reflective Surface (PRS) Antenna

Lu-Yang Ji1, Y. Jay Guo2, Pei-Yuan Qin2, Guang Fu1
1
School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an, China, luyangji078@gmail.com
2
Faculty of Engineering and IT, UTS, Sydney, Australia, jay.guo@uts.edu.au

Abstract— A novel reconfigurable partially reflective surface

(PRS) antenna is presented in this paper. The beam scanning
PIN diode Resistor
ability is realized by employing a reconfigurable PRS structure Capacitor Inductor
and a phased array as the source. The design achieves a beam
Port2 Port3
switching between -15°, 0°, to 15°with respect to the broadside
direction from 5.5 GHz to 5.7 GHz with the realized gains over Wf
t g2
12 dBi. Good agreement between the simulated and measured g1
results is achieved.
dslot
Index Terms— reconfigurable PRS antenna, beam scanning,
phased array antenna.. V1 Lslot V2
Lg
Wslot
I. INTRODUCTION Biasing
pad
A high-gain, low-profile beam scanning antenna has many Gap
Stub
applications, such as cellular base stations and satellite
communications. A conventional way to realize beam steering Via to the x

is to utilize a phased array antenna, but it has the drawbacks of ground

y
high cost and bulky structure [1]. Pattern reconfigurable Port1
antennas can provide a low-cost alternative to phased arrays Fig. 1. Structure of the feed network
and they have attracted significant attention from both
academia and industry [2]. However, most of the reported a function of the reflection magnitude of the PRS as following
designs suffer from low realized gains. It is well known that a
partially reflective surface (PRS) antenna can achieve a high 1-R
gain with a fixed broadside beam. It would be more useful if  Demax =  
1+R
its beam can be reconfigured. Recently, a few PRS antennas
have been presented that have the capabilities to switch the Generally, a center-fed PRS antenna produces a broadside
main beam direction [3-4]. beam. In this design, a phased array patch antenna is utilized as
This paper proposes a new pattern reconfigurable beam- the source of the PRS antenna to realize beam steering. To
scanning PRS antenna which employs a reconfigurable PRS obtain phase shifts between the array elements, reconfigurable
and a 2-element microstrip patch phased array as the source. defected microstrip structure (RDMS) based phase shifter [6]
The antenna can steer its beam between -15º, 0º, and 15ºfrom are incorporated in the feed network as shown in Fig.1. Each
5.5 GHz to 5.7 GHz (beam steering range of 30°) with a phase shifter consists of 3 identical RDMS units, as shown in
realized gain over 12 dBi. It employs a simple biasing network the inset of Fig. 1. Each unit consists of a rectangular slot with
and its phase shift network for the array source is integrated a size of Lslot × Wslot ; two gaps etched on the edges for
into the antenna, leading to a compact structure. inserting the PIN diodes; and two metallic stubs located in the
middle of the slots as mounting pads for the capacitors not
II. ANTENNA GEOMETRY only to realize RF continuity, but to provide DC isolation for
A. Design of a PRS antenna with a phased array source the PIN diodes as well. The dimensions of the RDMS unit are
listed in Table I. The phase shift is achieved by controlling the
A conventional PRS antenna is composed of a source states of the PIN diodes of the RDMS unit. The current path
antenna embedded between a ground plane and a dielectric for the off- state of the PIN diodes is longer than that of the
superstrate employed as the PRS. The PRS is usually placed
about half a wavelength above the ground plane with a TABLE I DIMENSIONS OF THE RDMS UNIT
reflection coefficient Γ=R∙ exp(jφ) . The electromagnetic Parameter Wf Lslot Wslot Lg
waves radiating from the source experience multiple Value (mm) 3.4 3.5 2.0 1.55
reflections within the cavity. According to the ray theory [5], a Parameter dslot g1 g2 t
maximum directivity at the broadside can be calculated as Value (mm) 4.2 0.4 0.7 0.65
 PRS
obtained compared to that of the off-state. As shown in Fig.3
FR4
microstrip patch (b), the entire PRS structure composed of such reconfigurable
aperture-coupling-fed z
elements is divided into two halves with opposite orientation
30 mm

antenna array
y
θ of PIN diodes.
Rogers aperture
The above reconfigurable PRS structure can realize an
4003 additional ±5 beam tilting on the basis of the previous phased
network array fed PRS antenna. By the combination of the
feed network ground plane
reconfigurable PRS structure and the phased array source, the
Fig. 2. Phased array fed PRS antenna (a) side view, and (b) top view proposed antenna can realize a ±15 beam tilting with respect
to the broadside direction. Moreover, instead of using a
on-state. For this design, the off-state generates a 30ºphase separate power divider and a reconfigurable matching network
delay with respect to the on-state for a single unit. By [4], the proposed antenna employs an integrated aperture-feed
cascading three RDMS units, a 90ºphase shift can be obtained. network for the phased array source and does not require an
The schematics of the entire phased array PRS antenna are extra impedance matching network; leading to a more compact
shown in Fig. 2. The dimensions of the antenna are 170 mm × structure.
170 mm. The phased array source is a two-layer structure. For
the first layer, two square microstrip patches with a size of III. ANTENNA PERFORMANCE
13.2 mm are placed at one side of a 1.524-mm-thick Based on the analysis and results shown in Sections II, a
Rogers4003 substrate and aligned symmetrically along the y PRS antenna with a reconfigurable PRS structure and a phased
direction. The spacing between them is 43 mm. On the other array source has been designed, fabricated, and measured. The
side of the substrate, two slots coupling are etched on the reconfigurable PRS structure is the same as that shown in Fig.
ground at the position of the patch center. For the second layer, 3(b), which consists of 6 × 6 reconfigurable cells, with
the feed network is printed on the lower side of another 1.524- dimensions of 20.5 mm × 20.5 mm, printed on the lower side
mm-thick Rogers4003 substrate. A 6.5-mm-thick FR4 of a 0.8-mm-thick FR4 substrate. The structure of the phased
substrate is used as the PRS structure which is located 30 mm array source and its feed network are the same as that shown in
from the patch array. Fig. 2. However, the size of the array elements is changed to
By employing the reconfigurable phased array as the 12.2 mm after optimization. In this design, φ = −145.5° for
source, the PRS antenna can steer its beam towards 0, −10, an off-state is chosen as an initial value to calculate Lr. After
and 10 when the PIN diodes are “all on”, “left branch on with optimization, Lr is set to be 30 mm.
right off”, “left branch off with right on”, respectively. A prototype as shown in Fig.4 was built to verify the
B. The reconfigurable PRS structure proposed design. In this work, we examine three states: State 1
refers to the state in which the diodes in the PRS cells are all
To further increase the beam-tilted angle and to improve
switched off while those in the feed network are all turned on,
the realized gain, the PRS structure employs 6 × 6
to realize a broadside beam. State 2 represents the case when
reconfigurable cells. Each reconfigurable cell is composed of a
the diodes on the left half of both the PRS and the feed
20.5 mm × 20.5 mm microstrip patch etched on a 24 mm × 24
network are switched on while the diodes on the right half are
mm × 0.8mm FR4 substrate. A 1 mm slot is inserted in the
turned off, to realize a beam tilted towards −y direction. State 3
middle of the patch. PIN diodes are placed at the two sides of
is opposite to State2 and it realizes a beam titled to +y
the slot (Fig.3(a)). The reflection phase of the cell element can
direction.
be varied by switching the states of the diodes to produce a
Fig.5 shows the measured reflection coefficients. It is seen
reflection phase inconsistency between the two parts of the
that an overlapped impedance bandwidth from 5.5 GHz to 5.74
entire PRS structure, which in turn switches the beam of the
GHz is achieved. The radiation patterns in the H-plane (y-z
PRS antenna. When the PIN diodes are switched off, the two
plane) at 5.5 GHz are shown in Fig. 6. The simulated and
halves of the patch disconnect from each other, which results
measured results are seen to be in good agreement with each
in a surface with a high reflectivity and a small phase. When
other. It is observed that a broadside radiation is obtained at
the PIN diodes are switched on, a larger phase value is
V

Substrate

Metal x
20.5 mm

1 mm y

PIN
diode
20.5 mm

24 mm Grd Inductive strip lines

Fig. 4. Prototype of the proposed antenna
Fig. 3. Reconfigurable PRS (a) cell, (b) entire structure
 IV. CONCLUSION
A novel reconfigurable beam scanning PRS antenna has
been proposed in this paper. It is composed of a reconfigurable
PRS structure and a phased array antenna as its source. Its
beam direction can be tilted between -15°, 0°, and 15°from 5.5
GHz to 5.7 GHz. Compared to other pattern reconfigurable
PRS antennas, the proposed antenna exploits two
reconfiguration mechanisms to achieve a larger beam tilt angle
without sacrificing the realized gains. A prototype has been
fabricated and measured to validate the proposed design.
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State 1. For State 2 and State 3, the beam directions are tilted
towards -15º and 15º from the broadside. The measured
realized gain is over 12 dBi for these three states.