MILLIMETER-WAVE SPHERICAL DIELECTRIC RESONATOR ANTENNA ARRAY

Abstract

The saturation of the lower frequency spectrum in terms of the future requirement for larger data speeds is opening up new prospects for engineers to investigate the mmWave frequencies. To meet this requirement, the present work includes designing a high-gain spherical dielectric resonator antenna at mmWave frequency. The purpose of selecting a dielectric sphere is due to its attractive features such as small size (dimensions scale down with dielectric constant), low dissipation loss (proportional to loss tangent), and versatility in the feeding mechanism. A stripline-based aperture-coupled feeding technique using stacked multi-layered printed circuit boards architecture has been demonstrated. For system assembly and packaging, a metal shielding layer is applied around the radiating structure. The single element antenna has been graduated to design its 16 elements (4×4) array. The basic principle of working of the antenna array is based on the concept of collective resonance in dielectric spheres. The use of array has resulted in improving the radiation pattern (directivity increment and sidelobe decrement) and its efficiency.