Manufacturing Considerations for the Development of Reconfigurable Antennas Using Inexpensive Inkjet Printing.

A study into the manufacturing considerations for developing a frequency reconfigurable antenna solution using a low-cost inkjet printing technique is presented in this article. The solution uses an off-the-shelf printer, cartridges filled with nanoparticle silver ink, and inexpensive electronic components. In this study, two conductive patches are printed on an inexpensive polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate, which can provide both switching and tuning by repositioning and rearranging of the components in a single-layer design configuration. The conductive silver provides an insight into the quality of the printed area. Furthermore, it provides information on potential procedures to mount and reattach the components. Inexpensive capacitors and p-i-n diodes were affixed onto the printed aperture using conductive adhesive to create complimentary dipoles for frequency reconfiguration. A single-band switching solution switches between two adjacent frequency bands. A dual-band tuning solution demonstrates dynamic tuning between a range of frequencies. Simulated and measured results are in good agreement with one another. An assortment of bands of operations allows the antennas to be suitable for mobile communication, wireless local area network (WLAN), and sensing applications. The dual-band nature of the tunable antenna can act perfectly as a bridge among 3G, 4G, and 5G communication bands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]