Investigation on microwave dielectric materials for dielectric resonator antennas

Abstract

In this paper, a theoretical and practical investigation on microwave dielectric materials for wideband dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs) is presented. Due to the variety of materials available to antenna designers, a proper technique to select the best possible material is required. In this paper Ashby's material selection methodology is used for dielectric material based antenna systems. Four primary performance indices, impedance bandwidth (BW), the size of the antenna (λ), radiation efficiency (η) and resonance frequency (f_{0}), are used to obtain the desired performance. The selection chart shows that Roger TMM10, (ε_{r}= 9.8) is the most suitable material followed by "Roger's TMM10i and RO3010" for DRAs to provide the best performance for wideband applications. Performances of antenna are verified with rectangular and hybrid design of DRA in terms of reflection coefficients, radiation pattern, gain and efficiency. Theoretical work is compared with the simulation and the close agreement between the two, confirm the validity of this study.