Computational investigation of power efficient plasma-based reconfigurable microstrip antenna

Abstract

A cold plasma-based re-configurable rectangular microstrip antenna has been computationally investigated. A power efficient frequency tunable patch antenna design is proposed wherein the substrate is replaced by a combination of air and plasma slots. The novel design consisting of plasma elements in localised regions achieves good tunability with minimal power requirements. Significant amount of frequency reconfigurability is achieved by varying the plasma density and slot configuration. A parametric study comparing the approximate power requirements and tunability of different designs has been presented. Finally the radiation properties of the proposed microplasma-based microstrip antenna has been evaluated.