Experimental demonstration of superdirective dielectric antenna

We propose and demonstrate experimentally a simple approach for achieving superdirectivity of emitted radiation for electrically small antennas based on a spherical dielectric resonator with a notch excited by a dipole source. Superdirectivity is achieved without using complex antenna arrays and for a wide range of frequencies. We also demonstrate the steering effect for a subwavelength displacement of the source. Finally, unlike previously known superdirective antennas, our design has significantly smaller losses, at the operation frequency radiation efficiency attains 80%, and matching holds in the 3%-wide frequency band without any special matching technique. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.