High performance 60-GHz dielectric rod antenna with dual circular polarization

In this paper, the design of a high performance dielectric rod antenna is described and validated through measurements. The manufactured 60-GHz dielectric rod antenna has the predicted gain of around 15 dBi and supports dual circular polarization. The lateral dimension of the rod antenna is very small in comparison to its counterparts. The measured port-to-port isolation larger than 20 dB is obtained for the bandwidth of 1.1 GHz. The measured axial ratio (AR) in the bandwidth of interest is below 0.5 dB. It will be shown that the very wideband return loss is due to the quadrature hybrid coupler.