“These solutions take up a lot of space and a single widely tunable element has the potential to replace several of these fixed components." He and colleagues describe in today's issue of the Journal of Applied Physics just such an element: a liquid metal antenna that can continuously adapt to different wavelengths by changing its length inside a capillary. "The present solution is to have a switchable filter bank along with switchable and/or multi-band antenna,” says Jacob Adams, an engineer at North Carolina State University. Monopole antennas, consisting of a single conducting rod, transmit maximum power when their length corresponds to half the wavelength of the RF signal, but for devices operating at different wavelengths this becomes a problem.
All those need antennas of different lengths and shapes to accommodate the sometimes widely spread wavelength bands. And in the future they’ll likely also have to contend millimeter-wave bands for 5G services. The Internet of Things will need more microwave bands with shorter wavelengths. Cell phones are already need to link to GPS and Wi-Fi services on top of 4G and other cellular networks. Tuning in is getting to be a complicated thing.
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