Unique Dielectric Protection for Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Antenna Applications

Dielectric covers are generally used to provide external protection to antenna systems by providing electromagnetic transparency. They are utilized in ground applications as well as for protecting airborne, Sat Com, terrestrial and underwater antenna installations. This paper presents a unique and universal design of dielectric sandwich-layered cover that can effectively protect antennas operating in a large frequency band from 1 GHz to 28 GHz, including millimeter-wave and microwave ranges, with minimum insertion loss for various incident angles. The proposed single dielectric cover may give sufficient protection for an entire tower or chimney housing multiple antennas, ranging from first-generation to fifth-generation microwave base-station antennas, as well as other wireless/broadcast antennas in millimeter or lower frequency ranges. In the first step, optimum dielectric constant and thickness of the dielectric cover are calculated numerically through a MATLAB (R2015a) code. In the second step, a floquet port analysis is performed to observe the insertion loss through the transmission coefficient against various frequency band-spectrums in microwave and millimeter-wave ranges for validation of the proposed synthesis. The ANSYS 18.2 HFSS tool is used for the purpose. In the third step, fabrication of the dielectric-layered structure is completed with the optimum design parameters. In the final step, the dielectric package is tested under various fabricated antennas in different frequency ranges.