E-Tenna Corporation

Titan Aerospace Electronic Division

Steven L Garrett

William E McKinzie, Iii

James D Lilly

Victor C Sanchez

Mark Reed

An electronically reconfigurable artificial magnetic conductor (RAMC) includes a frequency selective surface (FSS) having an effective sheet capacitance which is variable to control resonant frequency of the RAMC. In one embodiment, the RAMC further includes a conductive backplane structure and a spacer layer separating the conductive backplane structure and the FSS. The spacer layer includes conductive vias extending between the conductive backplane structure and the FSS, and voltage variable capacitive circuit elements coupled with the FSS and responsive to bias voltages applied on one or more bias signal lines routed through the conductive backplane structure and the conductive vias.

Reconfigurable artificial magnetic conductor

A tunable artificial dielectric material achieves the weight reductions made possible in U.S. Pat. No. 6,075,485 and further achieves even higher resonant frequency tuning ratios. In one embodiment of the invention, the artificial dielectric substrate for a patch antenna comprises alternating low and high permittivity layers, with the high permittivity layers each comprised of printed capacitive Frequency Selective Surface (FSS). An example FSS of the invention has a voltage tunable effective sheet capacitance by virtue of varactor diodes integrated into each unit cell. By appropriate adjustment of the bias voltage across the varactor diodes, the amount of the electric field stored in the substrate can be varied, which further varies the resonant frequency of the patch antenna.

Growing community of inventors

Jessup, MD, United States of America

Steven L Garrett