Capacitively Loaded Loop-Based Antennas with Reconfigurable Radiation Patterns

A class of metamaterial-inspired antennas having reconfigurable radiation patterns is proposed. They consist of a driven monopole antenna with one- and two-capacitively loaded loop (CLL), near field resonant parasitic elements. Two configurations are studied by considering the state of these CLL elements as being either open or closed configurations. Simulation results explain the design features and demonstrate that the structure can change its beam direction simply by controlling the switched states. Two prototypes with one- and two-CLL elements were fabricated and tested. The measured impedance mismatch and radiation pattern results are presented and compared to the corresponding simulated values.