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

Francisco Pizarro,Gabriel Hermosilla,Daniel Yunge,Matias Cuevas,Ariel Leiva

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3081068

Francisco Pizarro, Gabriel Hermosilla + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2021.3081068

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Journal: IEEE Access	Publication Date: Jan 1, 2021
Citations: 25	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Pontificial Catholic University of Valparaiso

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.

Highlights

With 3D-printing technology, the possibility of manufacturing prototypes or functional parts incurring in a lower cost and reduced fabrication times has led to a new revolution on many applications [1]–[3]
Cuevas et al.: Parametric Study of Fully 3D-Printed dielectric resonator antennas (DRA) Loaded With Metallic Cap TABLE 4
The obtained results show that it is possible to compensate for reducing the infill percentage, which changes the resonance frequency of the different DRA implementations, by using a 3D-printed metallic cap and varying its dimensions

Summary

Introduction

With 3D-printing technology, the possibility of manufacturing prototypes or functional parts incurring in a lower cost and reduced fabrication times has led to a new revolution on many applications [1]–[3]. Many studies has been focused on the high-frequency characterization of the materials used for 3D-printing [6]–[8] and on the fabrication of high-frequency structures such as metamaterials [9]–[11], antennas [12]–[15], dielectric lenses [16]–[20], amongst other implementations [21]. One particular structure that can directly benefit from the appearance of 3D-printing is that of dielectric resonator antennas (DRA). This well-known topology consists of a dielectric slab that can radiate depending on how it is excited.

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