A novel low-cost switched-beam microstrip smart antenna

The design of a smart microstrip patch antenna (MPA) with omni-directional or controllable directional patterns is presented. The antenna basically consists of multi-layered parasitically coupled MPA elements separately mounted on the four sides of a small box. Its salient features are low manufacturing cost, low profile, high mobility, high gain, and wide bandwidth. It is amenable to digital signal processing and various access schemes such as GSM.