Behavior of a parasitic supergain two-element array in a dielectric1

In this paper, the authors combine these techniques and show how dielectric immersion affects the electrical size and supergain of two-element parasitic supergain arrays. The authors present computational results which show that parasitic supergain is possible with closely spaced elements immersed in dielectrics, and that supergain is reduced as the dielectric permittivity increases. Furthermore, we show that optimum element separation, measured in wavelengths, will increase as the permittivity increases, which negates the decrease in electrical size due to the reduction in operating frequency. We demonstrate how the shape of the dielectric affects the element separation required for optimal gain, and show that total gain varies as a function of array volume for three different dielectric configurations. Finally, considering the antenna elements and the dielectric together as a system, we explore how much gain is possible for a given two-element array volume for several dielectric configurations and permittivities.