A compact multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna is presented for ultrawideband (UWB) applications. The antenna consists of two open L-shaped slot (LS) antenna elements and a narrow slot on the ground plane. The antenna elements are placed perpendicularly to each other to obtain high isolation, and the narrow slot is added to reduce the mutual coupling of antenna elements in the low frequency band (3-4.5 GHz). The proposed MIMO antenna has a compact size of 32 ×32 mm ² , and the antenna prototype is fabricated and measured. The measured results show that the proposed antenna design achieves an impedance bandwidth of larger than 3.1-10.6 GHz, low mutual coupling of less than 15 dB, and a low envelope correlation coefficient of better than 0.02 across the frequency band, which are suitable for portable UWB applications.

A reconfigurable antenna with radiation pattern and polarization reconfiguration capabilities is investigated in this paper. The antenna consists of a central dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) and two parasitic DRAs made of a liquid solution with low dielectric loss. Utilizing the flowing of liquid, the existing of parasitic DRA can be changed to produce different patterns. An omnidirectional pattern can be realized when only the central DRA radiates, while a unidirectional pattern can be obtained using the parasitic DRAs. Furthermore, the polarization of the antenna with unidirectional radiation can be changed by forming different parasitic DRAs, which can be realized via liquid flowing. Based on this principle, three different radiation states, namely, omnidirectional radiation and unidirectional radiation with x- or y-polarization, can be obtained. To verify the design, a prototype of the antenna operating at 2.4 GHz was simulated, fabricated, and measured. The measurement results indicate that the antenna provides effective impedance matching over the band of interest as well as radiation pattern and polarization reconfiguration capabilities.

The linearly polarized (LP) and circularly polarized (CP) filtering dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs) are presented. They have conducting loops inside them. Equivalent horizontal magnetic dipoles can be obtained from the HEM11δ mode of the DRA and the loop structure. When they are equal in magnitude but opposite in phase, the radiated fields can be canceled out and a good filtering response can be obtained. To demonstrate the idea, both the LP and CP filtering DRAs operating at 2.4 GHz were designed, fabricated, and tested. The reflection coefficient, axial ratio, radiation pattern, antenna gain, and antenna efficiency are studied, and reasonable agreement between the measured and simulated results is found. The LP and CP designs have measured peak realized gains of 5.86 dBi and 5.1 dBic, and out-of-band suppression levels of over 19 dB and 18 dB, respectively.

A pattern-reconfigurable Yagi–Uda antenna based on liquid metal is presented. The antenna consists of a balun-fed active dipole and a pair of stretchable passive parasitic dipoles, which are implemented by eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) alloy embedded in microfluidic channels. The parasitic dipoles are driven at each end by two low-cost, three-dimensional printed media rods. Afterward, spinning the rods at different angles leads to varying degrees of stretching upon the stretchable dipoles. Note the length of passive parasitic dipoles is a vital factor for antenna radiation reconfiguration. The antenna exhibits bidirectional radiation if the parasitic dipoles are equal in length. Otherwise, directional radiation toward the shorter parasitic dipole direction can be obtained. Based on the above-mentioned working principle, a pattern-reconfigurable antenna working in wireless local area network (WLAN) band is fabricated and measured. Apart from the reconfigurable capability, the proposed antenna keeps operating in the WLAN band of 2.4–2.48 GHz during the whole shape deformation.

In this article, we propose an equivalent circuit theory-assisted deep learning approach to accelerate the design of metasurfaces. By combining the filter equivalent circuit theory and a sophisticated deep learning model, designers can achieve efficient metasurface designs. Compared with most existing metasurface generative design methods that rely on arbitrarily generated training dataset (TDS), the proposed method can adaptively produce highly relevant and low-noise training samples under the guidance of filter equivalent circuit theory, resulting in a significantly narrowed target solution space and improved model training efficiency. Furthermore, we select the variational autoencoder (VAE) as a generative model, which can compress the raw training samples into a lower-dimensional latent space where optimization methods, such as genetic algorithm, can be more efficiently executed to find the optimal design than a brute-force search. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we apply it in the creation of three examples of frequency selective surfaces (FSSs), presenting wide-band, dual-band, and band-stop responses. Experimental results show that the proposed method can realize much faster and more stable convergence than deep learning design methods without domain knowledge.

In this study, an ultra-broadband dielectric-resonator-based absorber for microwave absorption is numerically and experimentally investigated. The designed absorber is made of the carbon-loaded Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) polymer and fabricated using the 3D printing technology based on fused deposition modeling with a quite low cost. Profiting from the fundamental dielectric resonator (DR) mode, the higher order DR mode and the grating mode of the dielectric resonator, the absorber shows an absorptivity higher than 90% over the whole ultra-broad operating band from 3.9 to 12 GHz. The relative bandwidth can reach over 100% and cover the whole C-band (4–8 GHz) and X-band (8–12 GHz). Utilizing the numerical simulation, we have discussed the working principle of the absorber in detail. What is more, the absorption performance under different incident angles is also simulated, and the results indicate that the absorber exhibits a high absorptivity at a wide angle of incidence. The advantages of low cost, ultra-broad operating band and a wide-angle feature make the absorber promising in the areas of microwave measurement, stealth technology and energy harvesting.