High‐gain magnetic‐dipole quasi‐Yagi antenna using higher‐order‐mode dielectric resonator with near‐zero‐index metamaterial

Abstract

For the first time, the rectangular dielectric resonator (DR) operating in higher-order TE3δ1 mode is investigated and used as a magnetic-dipole driver to design quasi-Yagi antenna with high gain. For further enhancing the antenna gain, a near-zero-index (NZI) metamaterial (NZIM) is proposed instead of the traditional directors and put in the front of DR driver. It is a simple structure and composed of a set of the parallel metallic lines printed on a substrate along the end-fire direction. Benefiting from the higher-order mode operation of the DR and NZIM, the realized gain of the proposed antenna can reach 10.3 dBi, including the gain improvement of 2 dBi resulting from the employed NZIM. To verify the design concept, the prototype of quasi-Yagi DR antenna with NZIM is fabricated and characterized. The measured results agree very well with the simulated results.