Computational electromagnetic simulation and performance analysis of reconfigurable antennas for outdoor 60 GHz applications

A number of measurement based studies have demonstrated that adaptive steering of highly directional antenna beams can overcome higher path loss of signals at millimeter wave (mmW) frequencies. In this paper, we present a novel 60 GHz pattern reconfigurable antenna capable of steering its beams in both the azimuth and the elevation directions. The performance of this steerable antenna is evaluated via ray tracing simulations of an urban city model. In both the line of sight (LOS) and non line of sight (NLOS) scenarios, the proposed antenna outperforms a conventional omni-directional antenna in terms of received power and delay spread characteristics.