Design of a Wideband Wide-angle Scanning Dielectric Resonator Antenna Array with Additive Manufacturing Capabilities for Satcom

Abstract

The mm-wave operational band (24-30 GHz) is becoming increasingly important for various practical applications. However, at such high frequencies, the issue of propagation losses arises, emphasizing the necessity for these systems to achieve high radiation efficiency. Dielectric Resonator Antennas (DRA) are promising candidates to replace traditional radiating elements like patches since they do not suffer from conductor losses and have a radiation efficiency of over 90% when suitably excited. Additive manufacturing has emerged as a promising technique for producing DRAs due to its numerous benefits, such as the ability to fabricate complex shapes and structures, rapid prototyping, and reduced waste. Additionally, 3D printing can enable the incorporation of varying permittivities within the DRA, further enhancing its performance. The influence of such permittivity profiles in DRAs, particularly in finite phased array setups, is yet to be thoroughly investigated. It is important to understand the impact of this technique on the mutual coupling, cross-polarization, and scanning performance of the array. In this work, we discuss the theory behind the radiation characteristics, the modelling of the DRA designs and the analyses of these designs based on performance criteria such as bandwidth, coupling, gain, cross-polarization and axial ratio bandwidth. This thesis demonstrates for the first time, to the best of author’s knowledge, that the incorporation of permittivity profiles in mm-wave DRAs can improve the bandwidth by 7%, reduce the cross-polarization (at broadside) by around 3 dB and improve the axial ratio bandwidth by around 10% compared to single-permittivity DRAs. Furthermore, it is also shown that in an array environment, the active S-parameters of the elements are better matched across a wider frequency band, upon scanning from 0 to 45 degrees, when a permittivity profile is used.