Miniaturized 1D beam switching and 2D printed Yagi‐Uda antenna arrays

Abstract

This article presents a multi‐board arrangement of printed Yagi‐Uda antennas that can be configured into 1D and 2D arrays. First, a 1 × 4 collinear array is designed and fed with a metamaterial Butler matrix (BM) network to provide beam switching at four azimuthal directions. Slow‐wave concept is used in designing the hybrid, crossover and delay sections of BM to achieve a footprint reduction of 67%. The 1 × 4 collinear array with the feed network achieves 8.42–11.7 dBi gain and 21.7–25.7 degrees half power beam width (HPBW) in horizontal plane for the four switched beam patterns at 5.8 GHz in simulations. Second, measurement results of the fabricated 1 × 4 collinear array with its miniaturized feed network confirm a range of 22–27 degrees in HPBW in the horizontal plane. Finally, parasitic structures are designed to reduce antenna coupling and a 3‐shelf holder is proposed to stack the 1 × 2 printed Yagi antenna subarray boards in compact 2D planar array configurations. Simulations of the 2 × 4‐array demonstrate achieving 13.09 dBi peak gain at 5.8 GHz along with reduction of the HPBW by 24.7 degrees in horizontal plane in comparison with the 1 × 4‐array prototype.