2019 29th International Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ITNAC)

Compact Multiband Frequency Reconfigurable

Antenna for 5G Communications
Adnan Ghaffar, Xue Jun Li, Boon-Chong Seet
Department of EEE
Auckland University of Technology,
Auckland, New Zealand
{aghaffar, xuejun.li, boon-
chong.seet}@aut.ac.nz
Wahaj Abbas Awan Niamat Hussain
Department of ECE Department of Computer and
COMSATS University Islamabad, Communication Engineering
Sahiwal Campus Chungbuk National University,
Sahiwal, Pakistan Cheongju-si, Republic of Korea.
wahajabbasawan@gmail.com hussain@osp.chungbuk.ac.kr

Abstract—This paper presents a frequency reconfigurable
antenna with compact size to cover sub 6 GHz. First, a wideband
triangle shape antenna is designed to cover from 2.31 GHz to 4.4
GHz. Two slots are included in the design to get multiband
response. To make the antenna frequency reconfigurable, two
pin diodes are added to get dual-band and tri-band mode. By
changing the states of pin diode, resonance in the sub 6GHz
band (2.5 GHz, 3.5 GHz, and 3.7-4.2 GHz) is achieved. When
both diodes are on, it resonate at 2.18-2.36 GHz, 2.68-3.32GHz,
and 3.75-4.50 GHz. In dual-band case, when both diodes are off,
the resonance frequency is 2.25-2.58 GHz, and 3.5-4.46 GHz.
Keywords—Reconfigurable Antenna, PIN diode, Compact
size, multiband antenna
I. INTRODUCTION
[12]. The antenna covers five frequencies but with large size
(150×150mm2). A differential probe feed frequency
reconfigurable antenna for WLAN and sub-6GHz 5G
application was presented in [13]. The antenna consists of two
patches that are separated by 2.5mm thick air gap. By
changing the states of switches, different frequencies are
achieved. This antenna has low bandwidth with large antenna
size.
This paper proposes a compact multiband frequency
reconfigurable patch slot antenna. The proposed antenna is
transformed from wideband to multiband by using PIN diode
as they have fast switching speed with low current. The
comparison between the existing research and the proposed
design is explained in Table I.

The size of mobile devices are getting smaller with recent TABLE I. COMPARISON WITH PROPOSED ANTENNA DESIGN
advancement in wireless communications. However, its
Central Antenna
complexity will increase as it is expected to handle wireless Reference
Design Size
Frequency Structure
standards to support high data rate multimedia applications (mm2)
(GHz)
[1]. Antenna is the critical component of every [10] 50×45 2.4/5.8/3.5GHz 2-layer design
communication system. Most of the antennas integrated in
0.9/1.8/2.1/2.45/
modern wireless system have fixed function characteristics. [12] 150×150
5.8 GHz
bow-tie design
To incorporate multi-functional antenna, the device will result
[13] 100×100 2.45/3.5GHz 2-layer patch
in some problems like large size, narrow bandwidth, complex
circuit, and reduced efficiency. To address this, it is highly 2.5/3.5/3.7/4.2
This work 30×30 planar design
GHz
desired to design planar, compact, flexible, smart and easily
integrable antenna. Reconfigurable antennas can overcome all
above limitations as they have reconfigurable properties II. ANTENNA DESIGN
(frequency, polarization and radiation pattern). In the
literature, researchers proposed different antennas from The proposed antennas for wideband and multiband
wideband to multiband [2]. Recently, reconfigurable antennas operation of future 5G communication are shown in Fig.1 and
have attracted much attention as they can change the Fig 2, respectively. The geometry of the proposed antenna is
frequency, radiation pattern and polarization according to the engraved on ROGERS RT-6010 having relative permittivity
requirement. Reconfiguration can be achieved by using PIN of εr=10.2 and tangent loss of 0.0023. Higher permittivity
diode [3, 4] , RF MEMS [5] , varactor diode [6], liquid metal substrate with thickness (H) of 1.9mm is used to achieve
[7], or field effect transistor (FET) [8]. A reconfigurable overall compact size while low tangent loss helps to achieve
filtering slot antenna (filtesnna) for 2.1/2.4GHz was designed a wider bandwidth. Proposed antenna consist of triangular
in [9]. The antenna design consists of E-shape patch, two pin geometry which is fed using microstrip transmission line
diodes and a switchable bandpass filter that is integrated inside having length Lf and width Wf. The bottom side of antenna is
the feed line of slot antenna. Frequency reconfigurable patch a ground plane having dimension of Lg × Wg. Two slots were
antenna with slots in the ground plane was presented in [10] utilized to achieve on-demand frequency reconfigurability
to cover the ten frequencies between 2.2 GHz and 6 GHz. from wideband mode to triband mode. Furthermore, two
Although this design covers more frequencies, it has large size diodes were used to achieve frequency reconfigurability from
with narrow bandwidth. Different patch shapes are used in
triband mode to dual band mode. The optimized parameters
antenna design, and compact hexagonal reconfigurable patch
of the proposed antenna are enlisted in Table II.
slot antenna was designed for WLAN application [11]. This
antenna is small in size with narrow bandwidth. A multiband
bow-tie slot antenna for energy harvesting was reported in

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 2019 29th International Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ITNAC)

A. WideBand Antenna Skyworks is used for reconfiguration. When a PIN diode is on,
The mid-band of the future 5G commonly known as sub there is an inductor of values 0.7nH is series with 1.5Ω
6GHz band consist of three bands, i.e., 2.5GHz, 3.5GHz and resistance. When a PIN diode is off, same inductor is in series
3.7-4.2GHz. To completely cover these bands, conventional with parallel of capacitor 1.5pF and resistor. While both
patch antenna is modified to form a triangular patch monopole diodes are in off state, the current does not find a way to flow
antenna. Firstly, a regular rectangular patch antenna was from the strip towards the patch, and hence both slots act as
designed using conventional formulas. Besides having a single slots, which result in dual band mode.
relatively large dimension, the regular antenna also expectedly
shows a narrow bandwidth.
Next, the rectangular patch was truncated to broaden the
bandwidth and to make the antenna size more compact. The
length and width of the ground plane was optimized to achieve
maximum bandwidth and compactness in size. Fig. 1 shows
the geometry of the designed wideband antenna.

Fig. 2. Wideband antenna with simulated return loss

TABLE II. PARAMETERS FOR PROPOSED ANTENNA DESIGN

Dimension Dimension
Variable Variable
(mm) (mm)
A 30 Gx 12
Fig. 1. Geometery of Proposed Antenna
Px 18.38 Py 30

Fl 12.8 Fw 4

B. Dual to Tri-Band Reconfigurable Antenna d 0.5 G 3

In the previous section, a compact size wideband antenna

is designed. To minimize the potential interferences from
undesired signals of frequencies adjacent to the desired bands
when the antenna is used for reception, two slots were utilized
to notch the unwanted interferences and passed the desired
frequencies. The distance between two slots is 0.5mm. These
notch bands can easily be controlled using the length of the
slot. The length of each slot can be calculated by:
= (1)
∗ ∗ ɛ
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Return Loss
The simulated return loss of the wideband antenna is
shown in Fig. 3. It can be seen from that the antenna covers
a wide impedance bandwidth of 2.11 GHz (2.31 - 4.42 GHz)
with reference to S11 ≤ -10dB which is 60.3% of the central
frequency. However, in the dual to tri-band frequency
reconfigurable case, when both diodes are on, the antenna
shows two stop bands with central frequency of 2.83 GHz

where, fnotch is the central frequency of the slot, Lslot is the total
length of the slot, Lslot is the total length of the slot, c is the
speed of light in free space, ɛe is effective dielectric constant
ε +1
and can be calculated by r .
S11(dB)

2
Although the antenna can mitigate the interferences from
unwanted bands, the allocated bands for different application
vary from country to country. Therefore, frequency
reconfigurable antennas were more preferred over multiband
antennas. Hence, two diodes were introduced between two
slots. When both diodes are in on state, the antenna work as
Fig. 3. Simulated return loss of wideband antenna design
triband antenna because the current finds a way to travel from
the strip toward the patch. PIN diode (SMP1345-079LF) from
 2019 29th International Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ITNAC)

and 3.64 GHz, and it will behave as receiving antenna. On (c)

the other hand, the three passbands in this case are 2.18-2.36
GHz, 2.68-3.32 GHz and 3.75-4.50GHz. Similarly, when Fig. 5. Simulated 2D Radiation Pattern for (a) 2.4 GHz, (b) 3.5 GHz, and
both diodes are in off state the antenna act as a dual band (c) 4.2 GHz, respectively.
antenna having passbands of 2.25-2.58GHz and 3.5-
4.46GHz. IV. CONCLUSION
A compact multiband reconfigurable antenna is presented
in this paper. First of all, a simple wide band triangle antenna
is designed that resonate from 2.31GHz to 4.42 GHz. To
overcome the band congestion, two slots are introduced.
These helped to notch the required frequency and stop
unwanted interference. Then two pin diodes are used to get the
required dual band and triband antenna by changing its states.
The proposed antenna shows good impedance bandwidth with
high efficiency.
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