Bandwidth Reconfigurable Cylindrical Dielectric

Ring Resonator Antenna with Metallic Loading

Latheef A. Shaik, Chinmoy Saha, Shivam Arora Jawad Y. Siddiqui
Dept. of Avionics Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics
Indian Institute of Space science and Technology University of Calcutta
Thiruvananthapuram, 695547 India Calcutta, 700009 India
yaadein.latheef@gmail.com, csaha@ieee.org jys.rpe@gmail.com

AbstractA new metallic loading on the outer surface of proposed to control the operational bandwidth of a cylindrical
cylindrical ring dielectric resonator antenna is investigated for dielectric ring resonator (CRDR) antenna without affecting its
bandwidth reconfigurability. The proposed design exhibits radiation characteristics.
considerable shift of upper cut-off frequency (from 8.2 15.9 The paper is organized as follows. Section II present the
GHz) with varying height of the metallic loading on outer surface antenna structure, geometry and detailed dimensions. In
of the cylindrical ring DR and thereby providing the bandwidth
Section III, results are discussed and Section IV concludes the
controllability. The designed prototype has been fed by coaxial
cable of standard dimensions. This hybrid DRA structure is
paper.
simulated using CST Microwave Studio Suite 2014. Proposed
concept can be used to change the bandwidth requirement II. ANTENNA GEOMETRY
without affecting the radiator or its radiation characteristics. The proposed antenna is derived from a hybrid
combination of a cylindrical ring dielectric resonator excited
KeywordsDielectric Resonator Antenna; Ultrawideband
Antenna; reconfigurable DRA; Hybrid DRA; by a quarter-wave length long vertical electric monopole
exhibiting a very wide bandwidth [5]. Quarter wavelength
monopole of length l mounted on a ground plane excites the
I. INTRODUCTION CRDR of inner and outer radii a and b with height h
The fascinating growth of the wireless technology has lead having dielectric constant r. This vertical electric monopole
to the ever increasing demand for the compact antennas excites TM01 mode and provides monopole type radiation
having multi functionalities. It is advantageous to have a
single antenna to offer all the functionalities [1]. One of the
key features is the bandwidth of the antenna and its radiation
characteristics. Dielectric antennas can be used for enhanced
bandwidth performance with high radiation efficiency as
dielectric does not involve any conduction losses. Dielectric
Resonators were initially been used as high Q elements for
circuit applications [2-3] but it has been found that on
removing the shield and lowering the dielectric constant,
same dielectric resonator can be used as an efficient radiator.
Controllable operational bandwidth of an antenna with
minimal electrical/mechanical loading allows the same
antenna to be used for versatile applications. It can also be 2r
used to improve the S/N ratio by rejecting the unwanted
frequency bands according to the user requirements. Majority
of the DRA research contribution of late has been focused
around bandwidth enhancement; however, equally important
feature is the bandwidth reconfigurability as per the specific l
a
application. Very recently frequency reconfigurability in DRA Ri
has been demonstrated by Danesh et. al. in [4] for
Metal ring b
LTE/WWAN and WLAN applications with four cascaded DR w
h
elements and PIN diodes to invoke various resonance hr
combination. This novel structure results in an increase of
impedance bandwidth characteristics keeping nearly uniform
radiation over the entire operational bandwidth of the Monopole
DRR
structure. In the current paper, a very simple technique is Fig. 1. Proposed Hybrid UWB antenna: a) top view b) bisected side view

978-1-4673-9536-6/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

 TABLE 1
ANTENNA PARAMETERS FOR THE PROPOSED BANDWIDTH
CONFIGURABLE CYLINDRICAL RING DILECTRIC RESONATOR
WITH METAL LOADING

DILECTRIC CONSTANT OF CRDR r = 10.2

Dimensions
Design Parameter
(All are in mm)
l 12
a 4.4
b 1.5
h 4.4
r 0.6375

pattern with broadside null. Fig. 1 presents the schematic

diagram of the proposed metallic loading on CRDR antenna.
The outer surface of the CRDR is wrapped by a metallic
coating of radius a , width w and height hr and shorted Fig. 2. Simulated S11 parameters of monopole excited cylindrical ring
with the antenna ground plane. It has been observed that DR with and without metallic ring loading on outer body of the DR for
varying hr with all other antenna and parasitic elements various height, hr of metallic rings
design parameter unaltered, the antenna exhibits excellent
bandwidth tunablity.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The proposed UWB structure is analyzed using CST
Microwave Studio Suite 2014 [6]. The hybrid CRDR structure
with various hr is placed over finite metallic ground plane of
thickness 0.5 mm. The simulated return loss of antenna
structure plotted against frequency is shown in Fig. 2. It
should be noticed that the total bandwidth response of the
CRDR structure without any metal coating is from 5.36 GHz
to 22.04 GHz. With varying height of the metallic coating the Fig. 3. Simulated E-plane (x-z) and H-plane (x-y) radiation patterns for the
upper cutoff frequency of the structure varies. It can be proposed CRDR antenna with metallic loading with hr=2.4 mm at 7.5GHz
observed that the upper cutoff frequency is 15.9 GHz, 10.75
GHz, and 7.95 GHz for the corresponding hr as 0.8 mm, another degree of freedom to configure the antenna bandwidth
2.4mm and 4.4mm. The bandwidth reconfigurability is as per specific application thereby preventing the need for an
additional filter section. The impedance bandwidth of the
contributed by the resonant tank circuit formed between the
antenna can be altered by simply loading the CRDR with
metallic coating, ground plane and the monopole which
metallic rings of various heights.
destroys the impedance matching in and above its resonance
frequency. As the height of the metallic coating increases the
corresponding inductance and capacitance increases leading to
the decrease in the upper cut-off frequency. The simulated REFERENCES
radiation pattern is plotted in Fig. 3 which shows a monopole
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[2] Richtinger, R.D., "Dielectric Resonators," Journal of Applied Physics,
pattern is consistent over the entire bandwidth. This shows Vol. 10, June 1939, pp. 391-398
that the metallic loading has no significant effect on the [3] Aldo Petosa, Dielectric resonator antenna handbook. Norwood, MA:
antenna radiation parameters. Artech House, 2007
[4] S. Danesh, S.K.A. Rahim, M. Abedian, M. R. Hamid, "A Compact
Frequency-Reconfigurable Dielectric Resonator Antenna for LTE/WWAN
and WLAN Applications", IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters,
IV. CONCLUSION vol.14, pp. 486 489, 2015.
This paper presents a new technique of bandwidth [5] D. Guha, D. Ganguly, S. George and Y.M.M. Antar, Monopole-Type
reconfigurability in cylindrical ring dielectric resonator Dielectric Resonator antenna with improved bandwidth, Proc. IEEE
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metallic rings . Proposed technique of bandwidth control adds