Design and breadboarding of a frequency-reconfigurable, board-mounted compact antenna

A quad-band patch antenna, fully integrated on a Printed Circuit Board, has been designed by means of an evolutionary method which merges Genetic Algorithm and frequency reconfigurability; the latter is implemented through a set of switches connecting the antenna patch to the ground plane. A prototype of the output device (antenna and Printed Circuit Board) has been built and its performance has been tested and compared with the numerical results: the agreement between simulations and measurements is satisfactory.