(1)- Pag 94 / 95 - C ONCLUSIONS The design of a reconfigurable antenna for Cognitive Radio applications has been described. In particular, the device is suitable to be employed for the communication function in a Cognitive Radio network where the sensing spectrum function is executed by another antenna or by a base station. The patch antenna comprises two parasitic elements connected by using PIN diodes as RF switches. This configuration allows to change the structure of antenna and thus its working frequencies. A parametric study has been performed to modify the starting structure so to avoid the use of impedance matching network. The proposed antenna accomplishes the imposed tasks since it provides a simple and low profile device with a good degree of reconfigurability. Future work development involves the employment of different RF switches (varactor, MEMS) and further improvements to the antenna geometry in order to obtain a higher level of reconfigurability and better performance in terms of bandwidth. Read more