A 3D-Printed Encapsulated Dual Wide-Band Dielectric Resonator Antenna With Beam Switching Capability

This paper presents the concept of encapsulated dielectric resonator antennas (E-DRAs). In E-DRAs, smaller-sized DRAs with a specific permittivity is embedded inside a larger DRA with a lower permittivity allowing for simultaneous efficient radiation at two widely separated and widely covered frequency bands. In this work, the proposed E-DRAs cover both the sub-6-GHz band (with a large size DRA) and mm-wave band (with smaller sized DRAs) for 5G and beyond applications. The proposed design of the dual wide-band E-DRAs is fabricated using the fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing process. At mm-wave bands, small cylindrical DRAs (cDRAs) are the radiating elements, and a larger cDRA in conjunction with a dielectric lens (DL) is used to achieve high gain radiation at such high bands. An array of 5 elements is used in a switched mode fashion to add switching beam capability to the antenna at the mm-wave band. Employing 3D printing reduces the fabrication time and cost and enables precise control of the dielectric constant of the DRAs. Measurement results show a maximum gain of 7.2 dBi at 3.2 GHz and 18 dBi at 31.5 GHz. The measured efficiency is more than 95% and 80% at sub-6-GHz and mm-wave bands, respectively. At the sub-6-GHz band, the measured 10-dB return loss bandwidth is 33% (centered at 3.6 GHz). At the mm-wave frequency band, the measured 10-dB return loss bandwidth is 27% (centered at 30.5 GHz). The achieved bandwidths are the highest among previous works on dual-band antennas at sub-6-GHz and mm-wave bands.

Automated summary

This paper presents the concept of encapsulated dielectric resonator antennas (E-DRAs) where smaller-sized DRAs with a specific permittivity are embedded inside a larger DRA with a lower permittivity, enabling efficient radiation at two widely separated and widely covered frequency bands. The proposed E-DRAs cover the sub-6-GHz band and mm-wave band for 5G and beyond applications, and are fabricated using fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing process. The measurements show high gain and efficiency at both bands, with the achieved bandwidths being the highest among previous works on dual-band antennas.