A Reconfigurable Spiral Antenna

with Wide Beam Coverage

Liang Gong*, King Yuk Chan*#, Rodica Ramer*
*School of Electrical Engineering and
Telecommunications
UNSW
Sydney 2052, NSW Australia
liang.gong@unsw.edu.au

AbstractA novel reconfigurable spiral antenna capable of

beaming toward five different directions is proposed in this
paper. RF-MEMS switches are incorporated into a single-arm
rectangular spiral antenna to steer the beam. Return loss and
radiation patterns are generated for each case by Ansys HFSS. A
good matching is achieved around 3.3 GHz. The gain varies from
4.8 dBi to 5.9 dBi for individual cases at this frequency.

I.

ICT Centre, CSIRO, Cnr Vimiera & Pembroke Roads,

Marsfield, NSW, 2122, Australia
Eric.chan@csiro.org

with beam directions spaced around 90 degree plus an end-fire

one.

INTRODUCTION

Smart antennas are essential components for

communication systems that require receive/transmit wireless
signals from/to specific directions, but suppression in other
directions. Spiral antennas provide cost effective solutions for
such reconfigurable antenna. References [1-4] pioneer the scanbeam rectangular spiral with switches attached. Nevertheless,
most of the directions they beam to cluster together to a limited
space. The novel design proposed in this article examines the
possibility of wide beam coverage in azimuth plane using radio
frequency microelectromechanical system (RF-MEMS)
switches.
II.

(a) Schematic view

THE DIMENSIONS OF THE SPIRAL ANTENNA

The schematic and top view of the proposed antenna is

shown in Figure 1 (a) and (b). The structure is very similar to
those proposed in [1-4]. The spiral arm is 1.4 mm in width. The
first segment has a unit length of a=4.8 mm. Then the arm
extends outward with sequence of a, 2a, 2a, 3a, 3a 7a, 7a, 8a
with the last segment 3 mm long. Rogers 4350 is chosen as the
substrate which has a dielectric constant of 3.66. The thickness
is set to 12 mm; approximately the quarter-wavelength at the
operational frequency. In this design a metal pin contacted with
the first segment of the spiral is connected to the inner
conductor of the coaxial cable; the outer conductor is attached
to the ground.
Better steering capability than the already published is
achieved by placing 3 switches (SW1, SW2, and SW3) near the
feeding point and 2 bridges (BR1 and BR2) between different
turns of the spiral (Figure 1(b)). Switches have the role to alter
the current flow along the spiral arm. Seven switches can be
arranged in 128 combinations theoretically, but most of them
are meaningless because of poor matching, split radiation
pattern, or low directivity. Table I lists 5 of the useful cases

978-1-4673-5317-5/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

206

(b) Top view

Figure 1. A beam steering spiral antenna.

TABLE I. SWITCHES OPERATION.
Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4
Case 5

SW1

SW2

SW3

SW4

SW5

SW6

SW7

OFF
OFF
ON
ON
ON

ON
ON
OFF
OFF
OFF

OFF
OFF
ON
ON
ON

OFF
ON
ON
OFF
OFF

ON
OFF
OFF
ON
OFF

OFF
OFF
OFF
ON
ON

OFF
OFF
ON
ON
OFF

AP-S 2013

III.

SIMULATION RESULTS

Simulation work is performed using Ansys HFSS. Switches

are assumed to be RF-MEMS switches which have the
following Lumped RLC boundary conditions: a capacitance of
0.04pF for ON-state or 3.76pF for OFF-state. This setting is
accordance with the MEMS switches in [1]. An on/off
capacitance ratio of 94 leads to unparalleled performance
outweighing PIN diodes or varactors.

(a) Case 1

T-plane at I 

I-plane at T 

(b) Case 2

T-plane at I 

I-plane at T 

(c) Case 3

T-plane at I 

I-plane at T 

(d) Case 4

T-plane at I 

I-plane at T 

(e) Case 5

T-plane at I 

A. Return loss
Fig. 2 presents curves of S11 parameters in dB for all of the
five cases. It can be seen that all of them have return loss better
than 10 dB from 3.2 GHz to 3.4 GHz.

Figure 2. Return loss for each case.

B. Gain and Radiation patterns.
Fig. 3 illustrates the equivalent structures based on
switches states and the simulated radiation patterns for both
right hand circular polarization (RHCP) and left hand circular
polarization (LHCP). Table II summarizes the maximum
RHCP gain, maximum beam direction, half power beam width
(HPBW), and axial ratio (AR) at maximum beam directions. It
is worth noticing that gain for cross polarization, i.e. LHCP, is
much lower than that for RHCP in the same direction. Low
axial ratio is attained by case 2 and 3 which indicate good
circular polarization purity.
TABLE II. SUMMARY OF MAXIMUM BEAM DIRECTION, GAIN
AND HPBW.
Max beam direction
Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4
Case 5

Theta

Phi

38
41
39
38
13

7
87
189
274
-

IV.

Gain
(dBi)
4.9
5.9
5.4
5.8
4.8

HPBW
(T
T-plane)
103
89
95
93
92

HPBW
(I
I-plane)
128
116
185
130
-

AR
(dB)
7.6
2.1
2.3
4.0
8.8

Figure 3. Equivalent structures and radiation patterns.

REFERENCES
[1]

[2]

CONCLUSION

A modified single-arm reconfigurable spiral antenna is

designed and analyzed. Simulation results show that good
matching is achieved around 3.3 GHz for all cases, and its five
beam directions are separate with each other at the operation
frequency. This design can be a choice for smart
communication systems especially those are less sensitive to
polarization characteristic.

207

[3]

[4]

J. Chang won, L. Ming-jer, G. P. Li, and F. De Flaviis, "Reconfigurable

scan-beam single-arm spiral antenna integrated with RF-MEMS
switches," Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 54, pp.
455-463, 2006.
P. Deo, A. Mehta, D. Mirshekar-Syahkal, and H. Nakano, "An HISBased Spiral Antenna for Pattern Reconfigurable Applications,"
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, IEEE, vol. 8, pp. 196-199,
2009.
A. Mehta, D. Mirshekar-Syahkal, and H. Nakano, "Beam adaptive single
arm rectangular spiral antenna with switches," Microwaves, Antennas
and Propagation, IEE Proceedings, vol. 153, pp. 13-18, 2006.
H. Nakano, J. Eto, Y. Okabe, and J. Yamauchi, "Tilted- and axial-beam
formation by a single-arm rectangular spiral antenna with compact
dielectric substrate and conducting plane," Antennas and Propagation,
IEEE Transactions on, vol. 50, pp. 17-24, 2002.