Parametric Study of a Fully 3D-Printed Dielectric Resonator Antenna Loaded with a Metallic Cap

Abstract

This article presents a parametric study of a fully 3D-printed hemispherical dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) using low loss dielectric filament and high-conductive filaments jointly with a low-cost customized dual-extruding 3D printer. The parametric study consisted in the design and evaluation of five different hemispherical DRA topologies with different internal shapes and the same overall size, in which the printing infill percentage of the DRA was reduced. A 3D-printed metallic cap was included in the antenna to compensate for the resonant frequency shift in order to maintain its original dimensions. Measurement results show that all evaluated antennas kept the same resonant frequencies and similar radiation patterns while reducing the overall weight of the topology in 22% of the nominal weight.