A 60-GHz LTCC Rectangular Dielectric Resonator R Antenna design w with Characteristic Mode es Theory

T. Bernabeu-Jimnez, A. Valer ro-Nogueira, F. Vico-Bondia, E. Antonino-Daviu, M. Cab bedo-Fabres

Instituto de Telecomunicaciones y Aplicaciones Multimedia Universitat Politcnica de Valncia C/ Camino de Vera, s/n, 46022, Valencia Spain tomberji@iteam.upv.es

AbstractIn this study, the theory of characteristic modes is used n of a wideband as the first time for the analysis and design rectangular dielectric resonator antenna. The rectangular dieletric resonator antenna was excited by a microstrip feeder with a rectangular coupled slot. The antenna is designed for lowwith Ferro A6-M temperature co-fired ceramic fabrication, w material and for ISM-band at 60GHz. The prop posed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 33% for S11<-10dB B.

m to design a compact This communication presents a method rectangular DRA (RDRA) using the TCM. The RDRA is nd excited by a microstrip designed with low permittivity an feeder with a rectangular aperture co oupled slot. This excites the TE111 mode inside the RDRA to ra adiate as a magnetic dipole. We have adapted the design proced dure such as to full exploit the possibilities of the LTCC tech hnology with the minimum required number of layers. II. ANTENNA A DESIGN On the one hand, we designed th he radiating element RDRA using the TCM including the infini ite ground plane. The TCM is based on the volume integral equ uation (VIE) as reported in [9]. The simulations were carried d out with FEKO and a MATLAB interface program. The re esults are as follows,

I.

INTRODUCTION

In the last few years, 60GHz wireless s communication technology research is increasing to cover the e demand for the exchange of gigabytes of data between mobile devices. ortability, lowApplications require miniaturization, po manufacturing cost and high-performance pack kages. Especially at these frequencies, dielectric resonator a antennas (DRA), introduced by Long et al. in 1983 [1 1], allow these characteristics and avoid metallic losses p produced by the millimeter waves. Moreover, DRAs have oth her characteristics as a reasonable bandwidth, easy of excitation, high radiation efficiency and easy fabrication [2]. liable fabrication As a mass production low-cost and rel technology, the ceramic multilayer technique L LTCC has proven attractive to fabricate this type of antenna. LT TCC offers many attractive features and possibilities such as the arbitrary number of layers, which facilitates their vertical integ gration. The low loss nature of the LTCC substrates at m microwaves and millimeter-wave frequencies makes them v very suitable for efficient antenna design, [3]. Regarding the design of the DRA, the theory of characteristic modes (TCM), with many applications in ed to dielectric metallic structures, [4], is being extende structures, [5, 6]. As it is well known, the TC CM provides the physical interpretation of radiation from a given structure. more precise than Besides, the computation of the resonances is m the well-known model based on magnetic w walls for DRAs when low permittivities are concerned. Moreover, the s straightforward. extension to other not canonical geometries is Historically, Garbacz was the first to show that there exists an red or radiated for eigenmodal representation for any field scatter any obstacle, [7]. After him, Harrington and M Mautz established a more direct method to obtain Garbaczs m modal expansion based on an integral operator, [8].

a)

b)

Fig.1. Eigenvalues and modal significance for the RDRA

By definition, the resonant frequ uency as a good radiator is done when n = 0 . Fig.1 a) shows th he TE111 mode resonating at frequency of 58GHz. Fig.1 b) represents r the normalized amplitude for the current mod des independently of the excitation. As shown in b), up to the green line located on ate the half power. Because MS=0.707 the current modes radia of this, it is easy to see the wide ban nd for the TE111 in relation to the other modes. t be excited is presented as The corresponding TE111 mode to follows in Fig. 2.

a)Electric field

b) Magnetic field Fig. 6. Realized gain for xz-plane (Phi=0) and y-z plane (Phi=90)

Fig. 2. TE111 mode at 58GHz.

III. On the other hand, to excite the TE111 mode we used a rectangular slot over an infinite PEC ground plane avoiding the excitation of the other modes. A microstrip line to feed the slot is utilized. Fig. 3 shows the scheme of the antenna designed.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The simulated results are obtained with FEKO program. In Fig. 4 the reflection coefficient and the realized gain are presented. Due to the low permittivity of the RDRA, the bandwidth covers from 50GHz to 70GHz for S11< -10dB, reaching an impedance bandwidth of 33% and covering the ISM band for 60GHz. Fig. 5 illustrates the electric and magnetic fields obtained after feeding by the slot at 85GHz. We achieve the TE111 mode selected by the TCM. Finally, the far field pattern for both, the xz-plane and the yz-plane is presented. This radiation pattern concerns to the magnetic dipole as expected. During the conference measured results of the actual antenna will be presented. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work is supported by the Spanish MICINN under Projects TEC2010-20841-C04-01 and CSD2008-00068 REFERENCES
[1] McAllister, M.W.; Long, S.A.; Conway, G.L., "Rectangular dielectric resonator antenna," Electronics Letters , vol.19, no.6, pp.218,219, March 17 1983 Rashidian, A.; Klymyshyn, D.M., "Very low permittivity slot-fed dielectric resonator antennas with improved bandwidth for millimetrewave applications," Antennas and Propagation, 2009. EuCAP 2009. 3rd European Conference on , vol., no., pp.3554,3557, 23-27 March 2009. Y.X. Guo, H. Chu, 60-GHz LTCC Dielectric Resonator Antenna Array, IEEE APS 2013, Orlando, Florida, USA, July 7-13, 2013 M. Cabedo-Fabrs, E. Antonino-Daviu, A. Valero-Nogueira, and M. Ferrando-Bataller, The Theory of Characteristic Modes Revisited: A Contribution to the Design of Antennas for Modern Applications, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat. October 2007 Franois Galle, Thomas Bernabeu, Marta Cabedo-Fabres, Eva Antonino Daviu, Alejandro Valero Nogueira, Christian Person, et al. Conception dune antenne de type DRA a 60GHz avec la theorie des modes caracteristiques. JNM 2013: 18 emes Journees Nationales Microondes, 2013 Gallee, F.; Bernabeu, T.; Cabedo-Fabres, M.; Daviu, E.A.; Nogueira, A.V., "Application of the theory of characteristic modes to the design of compact metallic strip antenna with multilayer technology (LTCC)," Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), 2013 7th European Conference on , vol., no., pp.1891,1895, 8-12 April 2013 R.J. Garbacz, A generalized expansion for radiated and scattered fields, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State Univ.,Columbus, 1968. R.F.Harrington and J.R Mautz, Theory of characteristic modes for dielectric and magnetic bodies, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-20, pp. 194-198, March.1972.

Fig. 3. Microstrip slot coupled RDRA scheme.

A conventional microstrip slot-coupled RDRA is shown in Fig. 3. The substrate used is LTCC Ferro A6-M with er=5.9 and tand=0.001. The dielectric resonator is designed using the same LTCC material as the microstrip substrate. The antenna has dimensions of L=3mm, W=3mm, h=0.6mm (6 LTCC layers), and d=0.1mm (1 LTCC layer) with a 50 Ohm microstrip feed of width Wm=0.14mm. The slot dimensions are Ls=1.5mm and Ws=0.2mm, and the length for the stub is Ls=0.77mm. The antenna is constructed on 7-layer LTCC substrate.

[2]

[3] [4]

[5] a) b) [6]

Fig. 4. Reflection coeficient, a), and realized gain, b).

[7] [8] a) Electric Field b) Magnetic Field

Fig. 5. TE111 mode excited by the slot at 58GHz.