Broadband Ground-Embedded Dielectric Resonator Antenna With Half-Space Coverage for 5G Applications

This communication presents a novel ground-embedded dielectric resonator (DR) antenna (DRA) which has a broad bandwidth and wide half-space coverage, based on the concept of complementary superimposition. By using the embedded ground, horizontal and vertical electric currents can be introduced. Their radiation can be combined with that of the original DRA, significantly boosting radiation at low elevation angles. This results in broad half-power beamwidths (HPBWs) of ~180° in two elevation planes. The design achieves wide half-space coverage across a wide bandwidth by exciting two adjacent modes. To validate the theory, the proposed antenna was fabricated and measured. Measured results show a broad usable impedance bandwidth of 2.35–3.55 GHz (40.68%), with HPBWs of ~180°. The maximum gains are 2.54 and 2.13 dBi at <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\theta = 0^{\circ }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> (boresight) and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\theta = 90^{\circ }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, respectively. Due to its embedded structure, our antenna is compact, making it promising for 5G applications that generally require both wide beamwidth and impedance bandwidth.