Circular Patch Fed Rectangular Dielectric Resonator Antenna with High Gain and High Efficiency for Millimeter Wave 5G Small Cell Applications

A novel method of feeding a dielectric resonator using a metallic circular patch antenna at millimeter wave frequency band is proposed here. A ceramic material based rectangular dielectric resonator antenna with permittivity 10 is placed over a rogers RT-Duroid based substrate with permittivity 2.2 and fed by a metallic circular patch via a cross slot aperture on the ground plane. The evolution study and analysis has been done using a rectangular slot and a cross slot aperture. The cross-slot aperture has enhanced the gain of the single element non-metallic dielectric resonator antenna from 6.38 dB from 8.04 dB. The Dielectric Resonator antenna (DRA) which is designed here has achieved gain of 8.04 dB with bandwidth 1.12 GHz (24.82–25.94 GHz) and radiation efficiency of 96% centered at 26 GHz as resonating frequency. The cross-slot which is done on the ground plane enhances the coupling to the Dielectric Resonator Antenna and achieves maximum power radiation along the broadside direction. The slot dimensions are further optimized to achieve the desired impedance match and is also compared with that of a single rectangular slot. The designed antenna can be used for the higher frequency bands of 5G from 24.25 GHz to 27.5 GHz. The mode excited here is characteristics mode of TE(1Y1). The antenna designed here can be used for indoor small cell applications at millimeter wave frequency band of 5G. High gain and high efficiency make the DRA designed here more suitable for 5G indoor small cells. The results of return loss, input impedance match, gain, radiation pattern, and efficiency are shown in this paper.