Low Cost Planar Waveguide Technology-Based Dielectric Resonator Antenna (DRA) for Millimeter-Wave Applications: Analysis, Design, and Fabrication

A compact, low cost and high radiation efficiency antenna structure, planar waveguide, substrate integrated waveguide (SIW), dielectric resonator antennas (DRA) is presented in this paper. Since SIW is a high Q- waveguide and DRA is a low loss radiator, then SIW-DRA forms an excellent antenna system with high radiation efficiency at millimeter-waveband, where the conductor loss dominates. The impact of different antenna parameters on the antenna performance is studied. Experimental data for SIW-DRA, based on two different slot orientations, at millimeter-wave band are introduced and compared to the simulated HFSS results to validate our proposed antenna model. A good agreement is obtained. The measured gain for SIW-DRA single element showed a broadside gain of 5.51 dB,-19 dB maximum cross polarized radiation level, and overall calculated (simulated using HFSS) radiation efficiency of greater than 95%.