Inkjet-printed cage-dipole antennas for radio-frequency applications

The authors present cage-dipole antennas that are suitable for inkjet printing. The antennas involve hard-coded switches, i.e. open and closed gaps, for providing desired antenna characteristics at radio frequencies. Optimisations are performed rigorously using the method of moments (MOM) or the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) combined with genetic algorithms to find the most suitable switch configurations. Thousands of trials required for the optimisations are performed accurately and efficiently using MOM/MLFMA without resorting to alternative representations of the antennas. Optimised antennas are further fabricated via low-cost inkjet printing. Inkjet-printed cage-dipole antennas, as well as the overall design and fabrication procedure, are suitable for radio-frequency applications that require inexpensive and easy-to-produce antennas.