Design of Dielectric Resonator Antenna Array With Wide-Angle Scanning Based on Dual Magnetic Currents

Abstract

A wide-beam dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) and its related phased array with wide-angle scanning are presented in this article. To improve the scanning coverage and cross polarization discrimination (XPD) simultaneously, the wide-beam method utilizes dual magnetic currents (MCs) in the same direction. The operating principle is theoretically analyzed using suspended MC theory. Two wide-beam DRAs working in TE <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{y}_{1\delta 1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and TE <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{y}_{1\delta 3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> modes with parasitic loops are studied to verify the presented beam-broadening method. The simulated 3 dB beamwidths of the two DRAs are higher than 205° and 140° in the E- and H-planes, respectively. Two wide-beam DRAs operating at 5.5 GHz were fabricated and measured. Based on the wide-beam DRA element, the passive eight-element array antenna and three feeding networks corresponding to scanning angles of 0°, 40°, and 80° were machined. The total array system is verified to have an enhanced beam scanning angle of ±85° with a gain fluctuation of 2.5 dB. The co-polarization is stable and the XPD is greater than 20 dB for any scanning angle.