Comparison between planar arrays of perforated DRAs and microstrip patches

An array of dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) elements is formed by perforating a dielectric substrate with a lattice of holes. The performance of a 64-element prototype array designed at 25 GHz was compared to a corresponding array of microstrip patches. The perforated DRA array demonstrates a gain improvement of 1 dB and a broader gain bandwidth than the microstrip patch array. This technique of fabricating DRA using perforations eliminates the need to position and bond individual DRA elements in an array.