An Alternate Technique Explored to Realize Half-Wave Electric Dipole Using Dielectric Resonators

This work, for the first time, reports the realization of a half-wave electric dipole-like radiator using dielectric resonators. The design challenges have been systematically addressed and a C-band prototype has been realized from <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{Al}_{2}\text{O}_{3}$</tex-math></inline-formula> material (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\varepsilon _{r}\,$</tex-math></inline-formula>= 9.8, loss tangent = 0.0001) as a proof of concept. It consists of a pair of back-to-back rectangular dielectric resonators (DR) on grounded substrates. Both elements are coupled through ground apertures and excited by a single stripline to resonate with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{TE}_{\delta 11}$</tex-math></inline-formula> mode. Strategic engineering with the ground plane (GP) has been envisaged and established as a robust technique. Standard electric dipole-like radiations have been experimentally tested, revealing 3.32 dBi to 3.98 dBi gain across the matching bandwidth. Importantly, it offers about 1.2 dB to 1.8 dB improvement in the gain value compared to a standard dipole. The utility of such a device would be best understood in the mm-wave domain, where the physical dimension of a traditional half-wave electric dipole may go below 5 mm to 6 mm. The proposed approach may offer a doable solution in such cases, and an evidence has been discussed.