IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
13, 2014
A Compact Frequency-Reconfigurable Patch Antenna
for Beidou (COMPASS) Navigation System
Chao Sun, Huili Zheng, Lingfei Zhang, and Ying Liu, Member, IEEE
AbstractA compact frequency-reconfigurable shorting loaded
patch antenna with the capability to switch between three oper-
ating bands of Beidou (COMPASS) navigation system (BDNS) (E2,
E6, and E5b) is proposed in this letter. The reconfigurable ability of
the proposed antenna is achieved via a circular rotational manual
motion. The feature of the shorting load is utilized in the proposed
antenna. By rotating the top layer of the antenna, the shorting
probe in the top layer can be shorted to the ground by different
sets of shorting pins with different length in the bottom layer of the
antenna, which means that the frequency agility is achieved. Simu-
lated and measured results show that the proposed antenna, which
has an overall volume of mm mm , has good
performance in all the three operating bands. Thus, the design
method proposed in this letter provides a solution for multiband
patch antenna that is hard to design using traditional approaches.
Index TermsCircular polarization, frequency-reconfigurable
antenna, rotatable reconfiguration antenna, shorting loaded patch
antenna, triband antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
W ITH the development of Chinese Beidou or COMPASS
Navigation System (BDNS), antennas used for BDNS
have received much attention. According to International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) filings [1], BDNS broadcasts
in three frequency bands known as E2 (15591591 MHz), E6
(12601279 MHz), and E5b (11921215 MHz). A compact
circularly polarized (CP) antenna that can cover all three of
these bands is needed for the applications of BDNS.
GNSS antenna [2] with bandwidth that covers all the spectra
of the four operating systems (11641610 MHz) can be an alter-
native choice. However, the wideband feature makes them too
large in size. Some dual-band antennas have been proposed for
the triband applications of GPS [3] due to the two lower bands
[L5 (11641192 MHz) and L2 (12151237 MHz)] being quite
close to each other and can be regarded as one wideband. This
method is not feasible for BDNS since the two lower bands of
BDNS are too far apart to be regarded as one band. Some ef-
forts have already been carried out toward the design of triband
antennas. However, most of these reported triband antennas, in-
cluding stacked patch antenna [4], monopole [5], and slot an-
tenna [6], are designed for WLAN/WIMAX applications, and
Manuscript received March 20, 2014; revised April 29, 2014; accepted May
06, 2014. Date of publication May 21, 2014; date of current version May 26,
2014.
The authors are with the Science and Technology on Antenna and
Microwave Laboratory, Xidian University, Xian 710071, China (e-mail:
sunchao1989913@163.com; hlzheng@mail.xidian.edu.cn; lingfeiz@
hotmail.com; liuying@mail.xidian.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2322754
1536-1225 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
967
the three bands of these antennas are far from each other. Above
all, since the three bands of BDNS are too far apart for wide-
band yet too close together for traditional multiband, it is quite
difficult to design a triband BDNS with the traditional design
method, and there is no reported triband BDNS antenna until
now.
To fill in the blank of BDNS triband antenna and overcome
the present problem, the frequency reconfiguration technique is
adopted as the solution. Based on the way to achieve perfor-
mance agility, the reconfigurable antennas can be classified into
two categories: the one that uses electrical switch [7], [8] and
the one that uses mechanical switch [9]. The former one, which
employs p-i-n diodes [7] or lumped elements [8] as the switch
circuit, is the most commonly used switching method. How-
ever, extra bias circuit is needed, which increases the volume
and the design complexity of the antenna. The latter one, me-
chanical switch reconfigurable antenna, as a new kind of recon-
figurable antenna, is proposed by Tawk et al. [9]. In that paper,
one feed port is assigned to switch between four monopoles with
different structure by rotating the antenna. However, four sepa-
rated monopoles make the antenna very large and the structure
reuse is actually not realized. Besides that, unlike the patch an-
tenna that is widely used in the satellite navigation system [2],
the radiation pattern of monopole is not ideal for the BDNS.
In this letter, a compact reconfigurable patch antenna that
is capable of switching between three bands is proposed. The
shorting structure is adopted to realize the frequency agility. As
it is well known, shorting loaded technique is a common minia-
turization method, and the length of the shorting structure has an
obvious impact on the resonant frequency of the patch antenna.
By rotating the top layer of the proposed antenna manually, the
patch can be shorted to the ground by different sets of shorting
pins in the bottom layer of the antenna, which means that it is
capable of switching between several different operating bands.
All the states of the antenna share a same patch and the volume
of the antenna is rationally utilized. Simulation and measure-
ment show good results, and they are in good agreement, which
means that the proposed antenna can be an effective solution for
multiband patch antennas.
II. DESIGN OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA
A. Feed Network Configuration
In the proposed patch antenna, the dual-feed configuration
is adopted to generate CP radiation, and a compact broad-
band 90 phase shifter feed network has been designed. The
schematic and photograph of the designed feed network are
shown in Fig. 1. The feed network consists of one Wilkinson
power divider and one broadband phase shifter in the form of a
stripline with two parallel open and short stubs. Fig. 2 displays
968
Fig. 1. Schematic and photograph of the feed network.
Fig. 2. Simulated performances of the feeding network.
Fig. 3. (a) Top view of the top part. (b) 3-D view. (c) Side view. (d) Top view
of the bottom part of the proposed antenna.
the simulated magnitude and phase differences of the feeding
network. We observed that the magnitude variation is less than
0.6 dB, and the phase shift unbalance is less than 3 in the band
of 1.11.6 GHz.
B. Antenna Design
The structure of the proposed antenna is illustrated in Fig. 3.
The antenna consists of two stacked cylinders: the bottom layer
that is fixed and the top layer that is rotatable. Fig. 3(a) and (d)
illustrates the top view of the top layer and bottom layer, respec-
tively. Fig. 3(b) shows the 3-D model, and Fig. 3(c) shows the
side view of the antenna.
First, a brief operational principle of the shorting structure
adopted in the proposed antenna is present. By loading with
shorting pins, the resonant frequency of the patch antenna
will decrease dramatically. The length of the shorting pins is
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014
Fig. 4. Reconfiguration process and the current distribution in (a) E2, (b) E5b,
and (c) E6 state.
inversely proportional to the resonant frequency [10]. In the
proposed antenna, four shorting strips, which are connected to
the shorting pins, are employed and coupled to the patch instead
of directly connected to the patch. That shorting structure is
proposed in [10], and the bandwidth of the patch antenna is
enhanced due to the capacitance between the patch and shorting
strips. Besides that, the shorting strips are designed to be
cross-shaped to increase the equivalent length of the shorting
structure as shown in Fig. 3(a).
In the proposed antenna, L-probe feed, as a conventional
bandwidth enhancement technique [2], is adopted and coupled
to the patch in the top layer of the antenna. There are three pairs
of feeding probes [marked as 1, 2, and 3 shown in Fig. 3(b)]
and one set of shorting strip (each set consists of four pins) in
the top layer of the antenna. In the meantime, there are two sets
of shorting pins [marked as I, II, shown in Fig. 3(b) and (d)]
and one pair of feeding pins (connected to the feeding network)
in the bottom layer of the antenna. Their position relationship
is illustrated in Fig. 3. The state of the antenna shown in Fig. 3
is set to be the initial state. The feeding pair 1 in the top layer is
connected to the feed network in the bottom layer, which means
that it is working while the other two sets are not working.
Meanwhile, the shorting set I in the bottom layer is connected
to the shorting pins in the top layer of the antenna and coupled
to the patch, while the other two sets are not working. In order
to differentiate shorting set I from set II, the folded shorting
pins are used in shorting set I to increase the length of shorting
pins, while the normal shorting pins are used in set II.
C. Principle of Reconfiguration
Fig. 4 shows the reconfiguration process. The state shown
in Fig. 4(b) is the same as the initial state shown in Fig. 3.
After adjusting the structure of feeding pair 1 and shorting
set I, the proposed antenna operates at E5b band of BDNS
(11921215 MHz). By rotating the top layer of the antenna
120 clockwise (the center of the antenna is set to be the rota-
tion axis) and fixing the bottom layer [as shown in Fig. 4(c)],
the feeding pair 2 in the top layer is connected to the feed
network in the bottom layer, and the shorting set II is con-
nected to the shorting pins in the top layer. Due to the use
of the normal shorting pins instead of the folded ones, the
resonant frequency of this new state can be increased to E6
band (12601279 MHz). Besides that, the structure of feeding
pair 2 can also be designed to realize the impedance matching
at this state.
In a similar way, by replacing the action clockwise with
anticlockwise in the process above, as shown in Fig. 4(a), the
feeding pair 3 comes into operation, while the shorting structure
SUN et al.: COMPACT FREQUENCY-RECONFIGURABLE PATCH ANTENNA FOR BEIDOU (COMPASS) NAVIGATION SYSTEM 969

Fig. 5. Fabricated photographs of the proposed antenna.

Fig. 7. Simulated and measured boresight gain and AR at three states.

Fig. 6. Simulated and measured VSWR at three states.

in the top layer is not shorting to the ground. The resonant fre-
Fig. 8. Simulated radiation efficiency at three states
quency of the proposed antenna will increase obviously, and the
antenna will operate at E2 band (15591591 MHz). Fig. 4 also
shows the current distribution in each state. It can be seen that
the radiation at E5b and E6 states appears due to the current dis-
tributed on both the shorting strips and the patch, while there is
hardly any current distribution in the shorting strips in E2 state,
which means that the radiation at E2 state is mainly due to the
current on the patch.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The antenna has been fabricated as shown in Fig. 5. The
antenna is made of five pieces of stacked substrate with dif-
ferent thickness of , and , respectively [shown
in Fig. 3(c)]. F4b with relative permittivity and
is used in the substrate with the thick-
ness of , and , while the microwave composite with
and is used in other substrates
including the feed network. In order to ensure that the operating
states of the antenna can be switched normally, an axis of
rotation is placed in the center of the antenna. Besides that,
considering the robustness, the via-hole, with some metal pads
around the hole, is also added at the contact surface of shorting
and feeding pins to avoid bad contact as shown in Fig. 5. Mea-
sured results show that there is no bad contact in the surface of Fig. 9. Simulated and measured normalized directivity and AR at 1.2 GHz
the two layers, and the robustness of the antenna is good.
The simulated results are obtained from the full-wave simu- is sacrificed to maintain the bandwidth of E5b state. The sim-
lation software ANSYS HFSS 13. The measured VSWR, which ulated radiation efficiency is shown in Fig. 8, and the radiation
is collected from an Agilent E8363B network analyzer, is below efficiency is above 0.7 over all the three bands.
1.3 over all the three operating bands as shown in Fig. 6. The In [11], the performance requirement of the GNSS (including
radiation performances were measured in an anechoic chamber. COMPASS system) antenna is discussed. Based on [10], the el-
The measured boresight axial ratio (AR) in each band is below evation cutoff angle is a crucial parameter for GNSS an-
2.5 dB over all the three bands, while the boresight gain reaches tenna. Generally, dB, a minimum antenna gain in
2, 3, and 3.3 dB in each band as shown in Fig. 7. The gain in RHCP dBic is desired over for
the E5b band is lower than the two other bands since the reso- a medium-quality GNSS antenna, and the cutoff angles are ex-
nant frequency of this band is lower, thus the electrical size of pected to be probably about . Figs. 911 show
the antenna in this state is smaller. Hence, the boresight gain the normalized radiation patterns and the AR patterns in the
970 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA

1) The external antenna for COMPASS handheld receiver.

There will be a mark in the shell of the antenna to avoid
the users rotating the antenna incorrectly.
2) The proposed antenna can be integrated in COMPASS re-
ceiver. The top layer of the antenna can be connected to a
rotatable knob in the shell of the device and the knob can
drive the top layer to move.
3) If the manual operation is indeed not possible for rotation
motion, a compact driving motor can be added on this an-
tenna as [9].
IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, a compact reconfigurable patch antenna that
Fig. 10. Simulated and measured normalized directivity and AR at 1.268 GHz
is capable of switching between three bands is proposed. The
shorting structure is employed as the mechanism to achieve fre-
quency agility. Results show that this new switching method is
much more flexible and compact than the conventional method
due to the shorting structure taking very little space. However,
it has a very obvious impact to the resonant frequency of the
antenna. Above all, it provides a good choice for the design
of multiband antenna, which is hard to design using traditional
method.
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