HIGH-GAIN APERTURE-COUPLED DIELECTRIC-RESONATOR ANTENNA WITH SURFACE MOUNTED HORN

Modern broadband communication systems and radars require lightweight compact antennas with high gain and wide bandwidth. Dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs) offer several advantages such as wide bandwidth, small size, ease of fabrication and high radiation efficiency. However, low gain has been a drawback of basic DRAs in some applications. Some investigations have been conducted to enhance gain of a DRA by employing offset dual-disk DRs [1], stacking parasitic DRs with an air gap between the driven and parasitic DRs [2], and composite layered high permittivity DRs [3]. These efforts achieved up to 2.7dBi higher gain than that of the single DRA element. A dielectric resonator loaded waveguide antenna with parasitic dielectric detectors has been studied experimentally for gain enhancement by up to 7 dB by Hakkak and Ameri [4]. All of the above gain enhancement techniques have two or more dielectric elements. In this presentation we propose a novel gain enhancement technique of the DRA by using a surface mount quasi-planar horn. The geometry of the proposed antenna is shown in Figure 1. In the proposed structure, the aperture coupled DRA works as a feed to the surface mounted horn antenna. Note that the rectangular DRA is located over the centre of the rectangular slot in the ground and is excited by a 50-Ω microstrip line feed. We have investigated this structure and optimized the heigh