Compact Laterally Radiating Dielectric Resonator Antenna With Small Ground Plane

A unilateral probe-fed rectangular dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with a very small ground plane is investigated. The small ground plane simultaneously works as an excitation patch that excites the fundamental TE111 mode of the DRA, which is an equivalent magnetic dipole. By combining this equivalent magnetic dipole and the electric dipole of the probe, a lateral radiation pattern can be obtained. This complementary antenna has the same E- and H-Planes patterns with low back radiation. Moreover, the cardioid-shaped pattern can be easily steered in the horizontal plane by changing the angular position of the patch (ground). To verify the idea, a prototype operating in 3.5-GHz long term evolution band (3.4-3.6 GHz) was fabricated and measured, with reasonable agreement between the measured and simulated results obtained. It is found that the measured 15-dB front-to-back-ratio bandwidth is 10.9%.