Compact reconfigurable multi-size pixel antenna for cognitive radio networks and IoT environments

There is a huge demand for wireless devices that have high data rates over different wireless communication systems (WCS) with reliable QoS requirements. Such devices should provide the ability to perform multi-function, and operate over different WCS. Reconfigurable antenna considers as an efficient solution to exhibit the communication capability in heterogeneous environments. Pixel reconfigurable antenna offers low profile, compact size, and reconfigurable shape. This paper proposes a multi-size reconfigurable pixel RF-switch-based antenna design, where the antenna is divided into four quarters. The effect of having different quarter configurations with such design is useful for dynamically adapting over several communication bands in IoT environments and cognitive radio networks. For reaching near optimum design and operation, a genetic algorithm is used for selecting optimum quarter and assigning a suitable configuration of each RF-switch within each quarter. This antenna design and configurations provide different operating frequencies bands for RFID, GSM, and WLAN e.g. 300, 400, 900MHz, 1.2, 1.6. 2.4, 5.2, 5.8, and 9.8. GHz with tunable bandwidth. Moreover, the obtained results of a preliminary simulation study of a cognitive radio network show enhancement in the average data throughput with increasing the number of radio bands per node.