A 2-D Electro-Magneto-Elastic Model and Experimental Verification for Nonvolatile Pattern Reconfigurable Magnetoelectric Antennas

Acoustically driven magnetoelectric (ME) antenna operating at low frequency reduces the antenna size and enhances the transmission efficiency significantly compared to electric antennas. This study reports a 2-D electro-magneto-elastic equivalent circuit model and experimental verification of nonvolatile pattern reconfigurable ME antenna (i.e., Ni/Metglas/ PZT/Metglas/Ni) for the first time. The proposed ME antenna modulates the magnetic moment oscillation with an adjustable built-in magnetic field, which results in a nonvolatile reconfigurable pattern. Specifically, the proposed model is constructed with constitutive equation characterizing 2-D stress coupling, magnetic charge theory, 2-D Newton’s equation, and Maxwell’s equations. Both the theoretical model and experiment indicate that the proposed antenna could provide nonvolatile reconfigurable B-field patterns within 360° with gain ranging between −121.3 and −120.6 dBi. The antenna with aspect ratio of around 1 facilitates the reconfigurability of pattern due to more convenient modulations, which provides the robust communication performance at various scenarios.