An Origami Inspired Reconfigurable Spiral Antenna

Modern day systems often require reconfigurability in the operating parameters of the transmit and receive antennas, such as the resonant frequency, radiation pattern, impedance, or polarization. In this work a novel approach to antenna reconfigurability is presented by integrating antennas with the ancient art of origami. The proposed antenna consists of an inkjet printed center-fed spiral antenna, which is designed to resonate at 1.0GHz and have a reconfigurable radiation pattern while maintaining the 1.0GHz resonance with little variation in input impedance. When flat, the antenna is a planar spiral exhibiting a bidirectional radiation pattern. By a telescoping action, the antenna can be reconfigured into a conical spiral with a directional pattern and higher gain, which gives the antenna a large front-to-back ratio. Construction of the antenna in this manner allows for a simple, lightweight, transportable antenna that can expand to specifications in the field. INTRODUCTION An art form that began in the 17 century A.D. has recently become an inspiration for a new generation of electronics. Origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding, has received much attention from the engineering community as a new way to manufacture and implement electronics as it allows for flexibility and adaptability by folding. There is a growing demand for consumer product miniaturization recently. Space inside devices, such as mobile phones, is becoming increasingly scarce and innovative ways must be created to fit electronics into a compact space. In order to achieve this goal, the effort has traditionally been centered around a reduction in the size of passive components and IC’s in both horizontal dimensions as well as height. Printing on thin flexible substrates such as paper presents another unique opportunity in addition to negating the height of a printed circuit board. Origami’s bending and folding of paper has led to an idea that innovative configurations can be constructed allowing further space saving. In [1], conductive ink was utilized on paper in an arrangement such that when Proceedings of the ASME 2014 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference IDETC/CIE 2014 August 17-20, 2014, Buffalo, New York, USA