Broadband CPW-Fed U-Shaped Dielectric Resonator Antenna for Wireless and WiMAX/WLAN Applications

Abstract

In this article, a new U‐shaped dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) forbroadband applications is proposed. The antenna consists of a modified steppedCPW trimmed to excite the U-shaped dielectric resonator with a relativedielectric constant of 10.2. A parasitic strip along the other side of the DRAis joined to the coplanar waveguide structure acts as tuning element for theantenna frequency band.  The proposedantenna is designed using the FR4 substrate of 4.6 relative dielectric constantand 1.6 mm thickness. The antenna is designed, analyzed, and optimized using afull-wave electromagnetic simulator. The results reveal that the proposed DRAhas an impedance bandwidth for VSWR<2 from (3.22‐5.92) GHz with 59 % bandwidth efficiency. Theantenna operating band covers the IEEE 802.11 and many bands of wirelesssystems like C-band, 5.2, 5.5 & 5.8 GHz-WLAN and WiMAX. The antennaprovides a stable quasi-omnidirectional radiation pattern in the H plane and bidirectionalradiation pattern in the E plane with a gain ranging from (2.5- 4.6) dB acrossthe operating bandwidth. The proposed antenna could be also used for lowerEuropean UWB frequency band (3.4‐5.0) GHz applications and for medical microwaveimaging purposes. The overall dimension of the antenna is 26mm×32mm×1.6mm andthe thickness of the dielectric resonator is only 8.12 mm; so, the antenna canbe categorized as a compact size and low profile antenna.