Dual HE11δ Mode CDRA for Polarization Diversity Applications in K Band Point-to-Point Communications

A dual port Cylindrical Dielectric Resonator Antenna (CDRA) has been demonstrated for K band (22 GHz) applications in this work. The antenna offers polarization diversity which is introduced by degenerating HE11δ modes in a single CDRA. Orthogonal feed lines produce two modes which are perpendicular so they don’t interfere with each other and offer excellent linear polarization diversity in orthogonal planes. Since the CDRA size is compact, the feed lines have been modified to assure the generation of desired modes. A detailed investigation into the generation of resonant modes along with parametric analysis is presented. Measured results show fractional bandwidth of 9.5% and 18.18% for both port 1 and port 2 respectively. Isolation of better than 32 dB has been measured between the two ports through transmission coefficient. Difference of about 20 dB between co-polarization and cross polarization in both planes for broadside direction has been measured which endorses the polarization diversity performance of the antenna. Different MIMO performance parameters including envelope correlation coefficient, total active reflection coefficient, channel capacity loss and mean effective gain have been measured to assess the performance of the design