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A novel partially reflective surface (PRS) antenna is proposed, which can electronically alter its polarization between linear polarization, left-hand circular polarization (CP), and right-hand CP. The antenna consists of a shorted annular patch antenna as the source, a PRS structure to enhance the gain, and a reconfigurable Wilkinson power divider as the feed network. Four p-i-n diodes are inserted into each branch of the power divider to change its electrical length. By switching the p-i-n diodes ON and OFF, a phase difference of 0°, 90°, or −90° can be realized at the two output ports of the feed network, hence enabling the antenna to radiate either a linearly polarized signal or left/right-handed circularly polarized signal. A prototype antenna with the biasing network is designed, fabricated, and measured. Good agreement between the simulated and measured results is achieved. Measurement results show that the proposed antenna has an overlapped 10-dB impedance bandwidth and 3-dB axial-ratio bandwidth of 4.7–5.36 GHz (13.1%). The average realized gains are $\sim 9$ dBi/dBic, which remain reasonably stable for different polarizations. The proposed antenna outperforms most of the reported polarization reconfigurable antennas for its wide bandwidth and relatively high gain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The design of a novel partially reflective surface (PRS) antenna with the capability of beam steering is presented in this paper. The beam steering is realized by employing a reconfigurable PRS structure to achieve a changeable reflection phase as well as using a phased array as the source to excite the PRS antenna. A prototype antenna including the biasing network is fabricated and measured. It achieves a consistent beam steering from – 15° to 15° with respect to the broadside direction across an overlapped frequency range from 5.5 to 5.7 GHz with measured realized gains over 12 dBi. Good agreement between the simulated and measured results for the input reflection coefficients and radiation patterns is achieved, which validates the feasibility of the design principle. Compared with other beam steering PRS antennas, the proposed one enables a larger beam steering angle with comparable gains, requires a simpler biasing network, and is more compact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]