Miniaturized reconfigurable dielectric resonator antenna array with reduced beam squinting

Abstract

In this study, a compact reconfigurable dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) array is proposed to operate in the band IEEE 802.11 WLAN. The main goal of this design is to propose an array feeding topology to avoid radiated beam squinting due to frequency alteration and acquire some gain enhancement with miniaturized array size. For that, the parallel–series geometry is used to layout a microstrip feeder with four output ports on the front plane. Each output port coupled with a rectangular slot (RS) at the bottom plane, and a rectangular dielectric resonator (RDR) mounted above the RS. The frequency reconfigurability is attained by employing PIN diodes that are integrated with the four output ports to operate as switches. Moreover, an impedance equivalent circuit model of the proposed array is postulated for studying the resonance behavior to ensure the validity of the proposed design prior to simulation and fabrication. The prototype 64 × 18 mm2 achieves frequency agility in the range of 5.8 to 5.17 GHz. Also, the realized gain ranges from 12.2 to 10. 5 dBi. The array specifications make it a decent potential candidate to be used for WLAN wireless systems.