A Switched-beam Substrate-Integrated Dielectric Resonator Antenna without Beamforming Network

A novel switched-beam substrate-integrated array antenna without beamforming network is presented in this paper. This antenna consists of three substrate-integrated dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs) which are formed using Air holes and metalized vias. Three microstrip are used to feed these elements through the slots. The air holes and metalized vias are properly arranged so that there exists a path between every two elements. As a result, whatever radiator is excited, the input power can be coupled to all radiators and different field distributions are generated, leading to three different radiation beams. Therefore, a complex beamforming feeding network is eliminated in this design. For demonstration, a switched-beam DRA working at 24 GHz is designed. The simulated main beam directions are found to be 0° and ±20° with the antenna gain varying from 6.43 to 6.72 dBi.