Novel compact UWB monopole RDRA for cognitive radio spectrum sensing applications

In this paper, a novel compact UWB, low-profile monopole rectangular dielectric resonator antenna (RDRA) is proposed using relatively low dielectric constant substrate material (Rogers RT/Duroid 3010 ε_r = 10.2) and developed for cognitive radio (CR) spectrum sensing wireless communications applications. The rectangular DRA is fed with a modified stepped microstrip feed to ensure efficient coupling between the RDR and the feeder. UWB operation is achieved by converting RDRA to monopole RDRA by finite ground plane which leads to a wider operating bandwidth. The proposed UWB monopole RDRA with finite ground plane produced an impedance bandwidth about 141 % covering a huge band for CR spectrum sensing. The proposed antenna is designed to operate over a frequency range from 3.1 to 18 GHz and the radiation patterns are stable over the operating frequency range. The frequency characteristics and radiation performance of the proposed antenna are successfully optimized with numerical experimentation techniques using 3D full-wave electromagnetic simulator Ansoft HFSS. Moreover, the proposed design is implemented using three dimensional finite difference time domain (FDTD) method for verification purposes. The obtained FDTD and simulation results are in good agreement.