Angular Sensing by Highly Reconfigurable Pixel Antennas with Joint Radiating Aperture and Feeding Ports Reconfiguration

Abstract: Angular sensing capability is realized using highly reconfigurable pixel antenna (HRPA) with joint radiating aperture and feeding ports reconfiguration. Pixel antennas represent a general class of reconfigurable antenna designs in which the radiating surface, regardless of its shape or size, is divided into sub-wavelength elements called pixels. Each pixel is connected to its neighboring elements through radio frequency switches. By controlling pixel connections, the pixel antenna topology can be flexibly adjusted so that the resulting radiation pattern can be reconfigured. However, conventional pixel antennas have only a single, fixed-position feeding port, which is not efficient for angular sensing. Therefore, in this work, we further extend the reconfigurability of pixel antennas by introducing the HRPA, which enables both geometry control of the pixel antenna and switching of its feeding ports. The model of the proposed HRPA, including both circuit and radiation parameters, is derived. A codebook is then defined, consisting of pixel connection states and feeding port positions for each sensing area. Based on this codebook, an efficient optimization approach is developed to minimize the Cram\acute{\mathrm{\mathbf{e}}}r-Rao lower bound (CRLB) and obtain the optimal HRPA geometries for angular sensing within a given area. Numerical results show that the HRPA reduces the angle estimation error by more than 50% across the full three-dimensional sphere when compared with a conventional uniform planar array of the same size. This demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach and highlights the potential of HRPA for integrated sensing and communication systems.