..

Characteristics of a low-profile circular disk DR antenna with very high permittivity

K.W. h u n g , K.M. Luk, E.K.N. Yung and S . Lai
Indexing terms: Dielectric resonators, Dielectric-loaded antennas

The fundamental broadside TM,,, mode of an aperturecoupled circular dielectric resonator antenna is studied. By using highdielectricconstant material, the DR antenna can be made lowprofde with a relatively low resonant frequency. The return loss, radiation characteristics, antenna gain and beamwidth of the configuration are measured and discussed.
Introduction: The dielectric resonator (DR) antenna [l] is attractive due to its inherent merit of having no conductor loss. With the use of DR, small-size and low-cost antennas can be obtained. 10) is traditionally While relatively small dielectric constant (E, chosen for the DR antenna to enhance the radiation capability, Mongia et al. [2] have shown that rectangular DR antennas of very high E, can also be used as efficient radiators, costing reduction of the antenna bandwidth. By using high E,, low-profile DR antennas with relatively low resonant frequencies are obtained. In this Letter the characteristics of an aperture-coupled circular DR antenna using very high E, are investigated. The low-proffie circumode [l]. lar disk DR antenna is excited at the broadside TMIlo The return loss of the DR antenna is measured, and impedance matching is discussed. Moreover, both the copolarised and crosspolarised fields are measured and are compared with each other. From the measured field patterns, the front-to-hack radiation ratio of the configuration is determined. In using high E,, the antenna gain of the DR antenna is of interest and it is also reported in this Letter. Lastly, the half-power heamwidth of the antenna is discussed to explain the difference in the impedance bandwidth and the antenna gain bandwidth.
3

4.0

4.1

4-2 4-3 4.4 frequency, GHz

4-5

Fig. 2 Measured return loss for different yd

a = 12.5mm, h = 2mm, E , ~= 82, L = 13.5mm, xd = Omm, W = 1.3mm, W, = 1.5mm, d = 0.635mm, E,~= 2.96, L, = 13.6mm ~ , = : ~ 1 5 - ; ~ - ~ . - . 1 5 , 5 m ; - . 16mm;-----.16.5Results: A circular DR antenna of a = 12.5mm, h = 2mm and E , ~ = 82 is measured using an HP 8510C network analyser. Fig. 2 shows the measured return losses as a function of frequency for different slot displacements y,. A very good match occnrs at y , = 15.0mm. From the Figure the measured resonant frequency is 4.25GHz, which is very close to the value of 4.21GHz (0.94% error) predicted from eqn. 1 and 4.14GHz (2.59% error) from eqn. 2. The measured bandwidth (ISli\ c -10dB) at resonance is 3.8%. Because a very high dielectric constant has been used, the bandwidth is smaller than the typical value of 8 13% using conventional DR antennas (E,~ = 10) Nevertheless, the obtained bandwidth is adequate for many practical applications. With reference to the Figure, impedance matching can be achieved by varying the displacement yd. Note that a small change in yd results in a significant change in the impedance level. This is different from that using relatively small &,e [3].

circuIa& anten

-20
0 -30

5 -40
-50
Fig. 1 Geometry of aperture-coupled low-profile circular DR antenna
a Top view b Side view Antenna configuration: The configuration of the circular disk DR antenna is shown in Fig. 1, where a slot of length L and of width W is used to couple the energy from the microstrip line to the circular DR of radius a , of height h and of dielectric constant E , ~ . The slot has displacement y , from the x-axis. The grounded dielectric slab has dielectric constant E, and thickness d, whereas the , and extends a length of L, from microstrip feed line has width W the reference plane. Resonant frequency: The resonant frequency of the circular disk DR antenna excited at the dominant TMIlomode was given in [l]:
-100 0 100 observation angle 0 .degrees Fig. 3 Measured field patterns at resonance

crosspolarised

-200

200

rn

a = 12.5mm, h = 2mm, E , ~= 82, L = 13.5mm, xd = O m m , yd = 15mm, W = 1.3mm, W , = 1.5mm, d = 0.6351~1, E, = 2.96, L, = 13.6mm __ E-plane H-plane

_________

where X , , = 1.841 is the first zero of the equation S, (x) = 0 and c is the speed of light in a vacuum. For a low-profile circular DR antenna, we have alh >> XI,,and therefore

Fig. 3 shows the radiation pattern of the antenna configuration. With reference to the Figure, the DR antenna excited at the TM,,, mode exhibits the broadside characteristics as expected. Note that the front-to-back ratio is IOdB, showing that the energy is mainly radiated from the DR antenna instead of the dielectric substrate. However, the ratio is 2 - 3dB less than those when relatively small E,~ is used [3, 41. The crosspolarised fields are also shown in the same Figure for easy comparison. It is seen that the crosspolarised fields are very weak, about 20dB less than the copolarised fields in the broadside direction. This is similar to the case using relatively [3]. small E , ~

Table 1: Half-power heamwidth of H-plane field pattern for different frquencies

Eqn. 2 implies that the resonance is due to the wave bouncing between the top and the bottom faces of the DR, and hence is insensitive to the radius of the DR. Frequency, GHzl4.0 14.1 14.2 14.2514.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 Beamwidth, deg.156 1 6 4 (64 165 (64 157 155 (53 149

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Infroduction: DR antennas are increasingly being investigated because of their potential and advantages. They offer advantages such as small size, mechanical simplicity, no conduction loss, easy coupling to most transmission lines, ability to obtain different radiation characteristics using different modes of the DR, etc. [I]. So far only a few DR antenna configurations producing circular polarisation (CP) have heen reported [2 - 51. In this Letter a new configuration of CP DRA is reported. The antenna consists of a rectangular DR, similar to that used earlier for generating linear polarisation by exciting only one mode [6, 71. However, by exciting two nearly degenerate modes with space-time quadrature, it is possible to achieve circular polarisation. Several elements have

Fig. 4 shows the antenna gain of the configuration in the broadside direction (8 = 0). A peak is observed near the resonance point as expected. At resonance If = 4.25GHz), the antenna gain of 4.5dB is observed. It is interesting to note that the 3dB bandwidth of the antenna gain is 11.8%, which is three times greater than the impedance bandwidth (an antenna gain bandwidth of 37% was observed in [3] for an impedance bandwidth of 12.4%). The wider antenna gain bandwidth is mainly due to the fact that the halfpower beamwidth becomes narrower when the operating frequency is beyond the resonance point. The half-power beamwidth of the H-plane radiation pattern around the resonance is shown in Table 1. It is observed that the beamwidth attains a maximum value at the resonance point.
Acknowledgments: This project IS supported by the UpGC Earmarked Grant and the Strategic Grant at City University of Hong Kong.
0 IEE 1995 I2 January 1995 Elecfronics Letters Online No: 19950291 K.W. Leung, K.M. Lnk and E.K.N. Yung (Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon,Hong Kong) S . Lai (Department of Radio Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guungzhou. People S Republic of China)

Antenna configuration: The test antenna geometry is as shown in Fig. 1. The rectangular DRA is placed on the ground plane side of a microstrip transmission line. A nonresonant slot is cut in the ground plane to couple the energy from the microstrip line to the DRA [7].The DRA is inclined by about 45" with respect to the slot. The slot width W was kept small ( W = U20) and its length was adjusted experimentally to provide good matching. Resonator length and width dimensions were chosen to produce optimal circular polarisation in the range 4-6GHz. The design procedure used resonance frequencies and antenna radiation Q-factor as predicted using the method reported by Mongia e f al. [SI. The feed substrate was Duroid (E, = 2.32) with thickness t = 0.0635cm. The feed line was terminated in an open circuit at a distance of about U4 from the slot.
z

References
MCALLISTER, M.W.. and SHEN, L.C.: 'The resonant cylindrical dielectric cavity antenna', IEEE Trans.. 1983, AP-31, pp. 40&4412 2 MONGIA, R.K., ITTIPIBOON. A., and CUHACI, M.: 'Low profile dielectric resonator antennas using a very high permittivity material', Electron. Lett., 1994, 3 0 ,pp. 1362-1363 3 LEUNG, K.W., LUK, K.M., and YUNG, E.K.N.: 'Spherical cap dielectric reSonator antenna Using aperture coupling', Electron. Lett., 1994, 30,pp. 13661367 4 LEUNG, K.W., and LUK. K.M.: 'Radiation characteristics of an aperture-coupled hemispherical dielectric resonator antenna', Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., 1994, 7 , pp. 677-679

I LONG, S.A.,

Fig. 1 Antenna geometry of aperture fed CP rectangular DRA element Theory: Using the scheme shown in Fig. I, both TEX,,,and TE",,, modes of the DRA are excited. These two modes radiate like xand y-directed horizontal magnetic dipoles, respectively [l, 81. To produce circular polarisation, the 'a' and ' 6 ' dimensions of the DRA are chosen so that the following relation is satisfied:
-

fl

QI

f2 += Qz

fi - f 1

Circularly polarised rectangular dielectric resonator antenna

M.B. Oliver, Y . M . M . Antar, R.K. Mongia and A. Ittipiboon

where fi and denote the resonance frequencies and Q, and Q2 denote the unloaded radiation Q-factors of the two modes. The Qfactors are related to 3dB bandwidths as shown in Fig. 2. It may L the lower resobe seen from Fig. 2 that at the centre freauencv ". nance is driven at its upper -3dB point, which provides 45" phase angle relative t o f , while the upper resonance is driven at its lower -3dB point, which provides 45' of phase angle relative tof,. The net effect is a 90" phase difference between the two modes, and hence the necessary phase quadrature required for obtaining CP. This is similar in urinciule to a near-sauare microstriu antenna -~ designed for circular polarisation [7].
~

Indexing terms: Dielectric resonators, Dielectric-loaded antennas

A rectangulardie,ectric resonator antetllla(DRA) produces circular polarisation with a single slot feed is investigated.The

antenna element wes mutually orthogonal nearly degenerate modes to generate circular polarisation with a low axial ratio Over a wide frequency band and a wide beamwidth.

Results: A rectangular DRA with E, = 40, b = 5.8mm, a = d = 6.4 mm was fabricated from Trans Tech material MCT-40. The resonance frequencies of the TEx,,, and TE",,, modes were predicted to be 4.9 and 5.2GHz and were measured to he 5.2 and 5.5GHz3 respectively [8]. The calculated radiation Q-factor for the lowerfrequency mode was -43. The DRA was glued to the slot diago-

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