Design of a Multi-Layer Beam-Steering WLAN Antenna

This paper represents the design of a microstrip patch antenna which is reconfigurable by means of the effect of a pixel grid overlay that is placed at a certain distance from the antenna. In addition to beam steering capability, this article will focus on several important parameters of the aforementioned antenna, such as, the directivity, the gain, radiation pattern and polarization. The antenna consists three main parts; a rectangular microstrip patch antenna that has the operating frequency at around 2.4 GHz, a medium that keeps antenna apart from the pixel grid overlay on distance of coupling and the pixel grid overlay itself. The objective is to design a smart and compact antenna with beam steering capability to improve the power efficiency of transceivers used in WLAN, WiFi and wiles sensor networks. The medium is adjusted to keep two adjacent layers on the coupling distance. The pixel grid overlay is formed by 31 pieces of a hexagonally shaped copper patch grid, each patch on the grid is arranged to be at coupling distance with neighboring patches as well. Besides being cost-effective, practical to apply and easy to produce, the parasitic-layer, has the advantage of ensuring the beam steering ability of the device. It has been also observed to increase the gain of the antenna and affect the radiation pattern.