Novel hexagon shaped dielectric resonator antenna array for wideband applications

This paper presents a new dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) for wideband applications, which has a stepped construction-the hexagon shaped upper resonator and triangle shaped lower resonator. The DRA is excited by a conformal inverted-trapezoidal patch connected to a microstrip line. The wider bandwidth is achieved, because of three factors: compact honeycomb and triangle shaped dielectric resonator, a conformal inverted-trapezoid patch as a feed mechanism, and a copper-clad substrate as a baseboard. A 76.25% matching bandwidth (S₁₁<10 dB) is achieved with broadside radiation patterns, where the impedance bandwidth covers a frequency range from 5.1 to 11.1 GHz. Based on the proposed structure, a four-element array is designed, and the degree of the directivity increases largely.