The Puck Antenna: A Compact Design With Wideband, High-Gain Operation

We develop a high-gain antenna with wideband operation and compact size by placing a small dielectric superstrate (puck) in front of the feeding antenna. The antenna performance is a combination of the leaky-wave effect, naturally existing in this type of antennas, and the edge diffraction effect occurring at the puck perimeter. Compared to the typical resonant cavity antenna utilizing a large superstrate, the proposed puck antenna has nearly four times enhanced performance (gain-bandwidth combination) while using a square puck of side slightly smaller than two wavelengths (at the design frequency). Further enhancement is achieved by making the puck circular in shape in order to add the diffracted fields in phase. The study is conducted through full-wave simulations and validated through measurements in the Ku band. The effect of puck misalignment is then discussed as a potential practical issue. Last, the ground plane is optimized for maximum antenna performance and relatively acceptable values of aperture efficiency (up to 51%).