Design of Multibeam Conformal Antenna Based on Liquid Metal

Abstract

In this letter, a conformable antenna operating at 12GHz is proposed. The antenna is composed of six Chebyshev linear array antennas (CLAAs) around the surface of cylinder. Liquid metal is used to print the antenna pattern on the flexible PDMS dielectric substrate to adapt to the cylinders with different radii. Each CLAA is connected to a radio frequency switch. The beam scanning of the antenna can be realized by controlling the <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">on</small> and <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">off</small> of each switch in turn. A single row of an array antenna can achieve a maximum measured gain of 14.8 dBi. The performances of the proposed conformable array antenna in different bending radii have also been investigated.