Design of dielectric resonator antenna array excited by waveguide probes

Waveguide-fed phased antenna arrays are typically used in high frequency applications. The paper proposes a design procedure for probe-fed dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) arrays using equivalent circuit modeling for the feeding network, to exploit the features of circuit simulators in the array synthesis problem. From the desired specifications of the radiation pattern, the adopted synthesis technique is used to determine the relative feeding currents of the DRA array elements. Then using optimization, the equivalent circuit parameters are determined and are subsequently interpreted as physical dimensions and positions of the probes. The results obtained assuming that the DRAs are isolated are compared to those obtained taking into consideration the external mutual coupling, showing that the radiation pattern and the scattering parameters are not significantly affected by the external coupling.