Equivalent lumped-element circuit of aperture and mutually coupled cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna array

Abstract

This paper presents an electrical model of aperture and mutually coupled three-elements cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA) array designed for 802.11a system applications. In electrical model, each antenna component is represented by its equivalent RLC circuit. The advanced design system (ADS) software is used to build the electrical model and predict the behavior of return loss, while the antenna structure is simulated using CST microwave studio before fabrication. The first and last radiating elements of the proposed array are excited through the aperture slots while the middle element is excited through the mutual coupling of its neighboring elements. The slot length and inter-slot distance effects on bandwidth are comprehensively analyzed and presented. The maximum gain of the proposed array for 5.0 GHz band is about 10.8 dBi, and the achieved simulated (CST, ADS) and measured impedance bandwidths are 1.076 GHz, 1.0 GHz, and 1.2 GHz respectively. The proposed CDRA array antenna exhibits an enhancement of the gain (7.4%) and bandwidth (93.3%) as compared to a literature work with aperture slots. In this study, it is also observed that by using the mutual coupling instead of third slot to excite the middle CDRA, side lobe levels are also reduced significantly over the entire 5.0 GHz band.