Filtering Rectangular Dielectric Antennas for Large Frequency Ratio Applications

This paper presents the design and performance analysis of a novel antenna aimed for 5G Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), WLAN and millimeter-wave (mm-wave) 5G applications. Antenna consists of two rectangular dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs). The antenna is multi-band and covers the Citizens Broadband Radio Service band (2.75-3.8 GHz), WLAN band (4.4-5.47 GHz) as well as the mm-wave band (23.1- 24.99 GHz) making it applicable to indoor deployments. Antenna is fed through slot coupled feeding mechanism. The feeding method implements a filtering strip-line which filters the mm- wave band from and prohibits excitation of low-band DRA at mm- waveband. Simulation was performed using a full-wave simulator, and the results show that the antenna has peak gains of 6.37 dBi, 5.7 dBi, and 7.5 dBi in the respective frequency bands, which shows robust performance in terms of gain and bandwidth. Furthermore, radiation patterns at both azimuth and elevation planes verify that only the small DRA is excited over the mm-wave frequency range. These observations, hence, clearly illustrate the potential of the antenna to realize low as well as high-frequency applications and the progress made towards realizing such technologies for future wireless communication applications under 5G and beyond.