A Wideband Configurable Multi-Port Wire Antenna

This work presents a configurable 11-port wire antenna with the ability to synthesize the beam and perform beam steering across a broad range of frequencies. We employ an analytical method to select the number of ports, their location across the aperture and excite them according to the desired radiation pattern and frequency band. Next, we implement the antenna and feeding network on a printed board. Measurements show the proposed multi-port antenna can directly synthesize, radiate, and steer the beam across 5 −18GHz. Both board and over-the-air measurements of the aperture network match well with the expected response from the analytical approach. The results from this work pave the way for a scalable design methodology for multi-port configurable apertures.