design of a frequency reconfigurable broadband thz antenna based on the vanadium dioxide

In this article, the design of a frequency reconfigurable broadband thz antenna based on vanadium dioxide (vo2) is investigated. instead of being fed by the microstrip line directly, a windmill-shaped feeding structure is designed to provide a proximity-coupled feeding method. many modes with contiguous resonant frequencies can be excited to obtain the wideband performance. the proposed antenna combines gold with metamaterial vo2. thanks to insulator-metal phase transition characteristic of vo2 at phase transition temperature (68 °c), we can change the length of the resonant branches to realize frequency reconfiguration by changing the external temperature (t). the simulated results illustrate that when t = 50 °c (state i), such an antenna has a bandwidth of 35.2% (7.01–10 thz) with s11 below − 10 db, and a maximum gain of 6.62 dbic. when t = 80 °c (state ii), it has a bandwidth of 21.8% (5.77–7.18 thz) with s11 below − 10 db, and a maximum gain of 4.49 dbic. thus, we realize a design of a proximity-coupled antenna with reconfigurable wideband over the thz band.