A miniature, planar, and switched-beam smart antenna employing a four- element slot antenna array for Digital Home applications

In this paper, a miniature, planar, and switched-beam smart antenna is proposed. The antenna mainly comprises of a four-element array with elements based on an L-shaped quarter-wavelength slot antenna and four pin diodes to control the antenna elements. Since the pattern of a radiation element is directional with maximum at a specific direction, we arrange the four antennas with maximum radiation direction toward 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees, respectively. Consequently, by carefully controlling the diodes, a switchable beam smart antenna can be achieved. To prove the concept, a 2.4 GHz smart antenna is designed. The experimental results fully demonstrate the performance of the proposed antenna. Due to the miniature and planar features, such a design will be a promising solution for digital home applications.