A Low-Profile and Broadband Pattern-Reconfigurable Dielectric Resonator Antenna With Wide Spatial Coverage

Abstract

In this communication, a broadband and low-profile pattern-reconfigurable dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with four different radiation patterns is proposed. By exciting two feeding ports with different phases, four patterns of a conical pattern, a broadside pattern, and two tilted patterns can be obtained. The excited four different patterns with high gains can help to achieve a wide spatial coverage. For demonstration, the proposed DRA was designed at 3.5 GHz frequency band for potential 5G applications. The prototype of the proposed DRA was fabricated and measured for verification. A measured broad bandwidth of 15% (3.38–3.93 GHz) can be achieved using a low-profile of $\sim 0.1\lambda _{0}$ . Measured maximum antenna gains of 4.98, 7.84, and 7.65 dBi are obtained over the impedance bandwidth for conical, broadside, and tilted patterns, respectively. High efficiencies with maximum values of ~95% can be realized. The proposed DRA presents a low-profile, a wide impedance bandwidth, high gains, and various radiation patterns simultaneously. It shows great potentials to be implemented in complex communications.