Intellectual Merit: This BRIGE proposal describes a plan to develop mechanisms for slot antennas that will enable numerous unique reconfigurable antenna designs for the next generation of wireless technology. The project represents the first step of a long-term goal to build a diverse team of researchers at the University of Oklahoma (OU) investigating novel antenna architectures that address a national need to solve the spectrum crisis. The first step in designing practical and efficient, reconfigurable slot antennas is development of the loading mechanism that electrically alters a property of the antenna. Slot antennas have many desirable properties such as omnidirectional radiation and relative placement insensitivity. However, reconfigurable antennas are challenging with slotline due to the presence of only one ground plane, which makes the required bias networks problematic and detrimental to the antenna's performance. The proposed work will develop easily-biased and efficient loading mechanisms for slot antennas that will enable many reconfigurable antenna designs and lead to more practical designs to be implemented in systems.
Broader Impacts: The proposed work will advance many types of reconfigurable antennas, which have the potential to operate at a range of frequencies, change the main beam to receive/transmit from a different direction, and/or adapt to changes in operating conditions. This will enable truly cognitive radio/radar that can find and operate in unused spectrum - eliminating the requirement for strictly assigned spectrum use. Transmission line models will be developed for all investigated structures allowing the structures to be broadly applicable and transferable for use as loading mechanisms for many different reconfigurable antenna designs. Accurate models for these structures will have far-reaching effects beyond the proposed work since with these models the fundamental structure behavior can be more easily understood. In addition to the broad impact upon future wireless systems, the proposed work will enhance the retention and recruitment of women in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). The PI is the founder and faculty advisor of Women in ECE (WECE) at OU. The proposed work will expand previously initiated events and implement a laboratory workshop with WECE. Students who complete the workshop will be recruited to participate in undergraduate research with the PI. Additionally, the PI will begin tracking all students in ECE through a detailed data set for each cohort of students for the next five years to determine critical points for intervention methods to improve retention.
