A Fully Integrated Frequency Reconfigurable Antenna Co-Designed as a Whole Circuit on Silicon

This paper presents a novel frequency reconfigurable patch antenna where the tunable element is not only integrated in a silicon substrate but also co-designed and manufactured in the same process flow as the antenna itself. The active element is based on a N
⁺
PP
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junction which acts as a switch (OFF- and ON-states). With a low bias voltage (- 1.2 V), one radiated slot is short-circuited to the ground plane on the whole antenna width allowing a tuning frequency of the patch antenna. A demonstrator, which has been characterized and manufactured validates the co-designed method of the resonant frequency antenna. It switches from 11.6 GHz to 17.4 GHz.