Metal loaded miniaturized CPW fed DRA

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the realization of miniaturized and high capacity transceiver systems. The dielectric resonator antenna ( DRA ) has been an ideal candidate for low-loss and broadband microwave and millimeter wave applications. The coplanar waveguide ( CPW ) feed has been proposed as an efficient feed topology to the DRA due to its low loss, dispersion, ease of active integration and uniplanar configuration. This paper presents a novel, high gain and miniaturized rectangular dielectric resonator antenna using a metallic slab as a loading element, integrated with the CPW feed. The rectangular DRA is fed with a CPW (Capacitive type) feed to ensure efficient coupling. The unloaded and loaded DRA resonance frequencies are 4.55 GHz and 3.80 GHz respectively, achieving a 16.48% reduction in resonance frequency. The gain of the unloaded and the loaded DRAs are 6.34 dBi and 6.95 dBi respectively. As a result, a 8.77% increase in gain is obtained with the loaded configuration. In addition, despite the high reduction in resonance frequency and conductor loading, it is observed that there is no significant change in efficiency of the loaded antenna relative to the original structure. Also, it is seen that the coupling performance, cross-polarization and front-to-back ratio in the radiated fields of the size-reduced antenna remain essentially unchanged relative to the unloaded configuration.