What is it about?
We printed an antenna onto paper (thermal transfer printing), and added electronically-controllable switches (diodes) so we can completely change the operating frequency band at any time (switching between 800 MHz and 2400 MHz bands).
Featured Image
Why is it important?
We show how to add electronic reconfigurability to a type of antenna that is well suited to low-cost high-volume manufacturing, a feature usually reserved for higher-cost antennas made with traditional techniques. These antennas will be useful in applications, such as the internet of things, that need lots of antennas (hence the need for a low cost technique) but also need reconfigurability (so as to adapt to changing communications environments).
Perspectives
With the prospect of billions of devices becoming connected to the internet of things, we're rapidly approaching the point at which we will need more antennas to be designed than we have antenna engineers to design them. So there is great benefit in developing antennas on flexible substrates that are reconfigurable, because they can potentially be used in a greater variety of products for less design effort.
Dr Timothy D Drysdale
The Open University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Diode-switched thermal-transfer printed antenna on flexible substrate, Electronics Letters, February 2016, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (the IET),
DOI: 10.1049/el.2015.3060.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
