A novel pattern reconfigurable dual beam Vivaldi antenna with water-based absorbers

In this paper, a novel orthogonal dual-beam Vivaldi antenna loaded with metamaterial lenses (MLs) is designed as the original antenna. Then, we designed two simple water-based absorbers (WBAs) containers using 3D printing technology, which can be mounted on the ML. WBA filled with water can absorb electromagnetic waves radiated from antenna aperture, while empty WBA does not affect antenna radiation. The antenna radiation pattern can be reconstructed by selectively injecting water into WBAs. The proposed antenna can realize three radiation states in the operating frequency band, including radiation along the X direction and Y direction at the same time (state 1), radiation along X direction (state 2), and radiation along the Y direction (state 3). The proposed antenna has an operating frequency range from 3 GHz to 6 GHz, which realizes the coverage of the 5G sub-6 GHz main frequency band. Finally, the measured results of the antenna are consistent with the simulated. The work in this paper has potential application value in the 5G communication system and point-to-point communication system.