Design of Substrate-Integrated Dielectric Resonator Antenna With Dielectric Vias

For the first time, dielectric vias were used to design a substrate-integrated dielectric resonator antenna (SIDRA). The dielectric vias consist of cylindrical holes drilled into the PCB substrate and filled with presintered nanoparticles of barium strontium titanate (BST). The BST nanoparticles were found to have a dielectric constant of 20, with an approximate loss tangent of ~0.05. The dielectric-vias loaded substrate constitutes an effective medium for the DRA design. The dielectric vias are arranged in a concentric manner around a core substrate material region, giving a wideband multiring SIDRA. It was found that the wideband behavior is due to two different dielectric resonator modes, namely, the TE
_δ11
mode and TE
_δ31
half-mode. The TE
_δ31
half-mode is a modified version of the TE
_δ31
-mode of a regular dielectric resonator and is reported here for the first time. The measured and simulated -10-dB impedance bandwidths of the DRA are 33.4% and 35.8%, respectively.