A Compact and Broadband Dielectric Resonator Magnetoelectric Dipole Antenna With High Front-to-Back Ratio

A broadband dielectric resonator (DR) magnetoelectric dipole antenna is proposed in this letter. The antenna prototype consists of a foam-supported DR with a metallic groove and a differentially fed bow-tie-shaped metal semiloop. Since the metallic groove is elevated a quarter effective wavelength above the ground plane, the DR excited in its
${\bm{TE}}_{{\bm{\delta }}11}^{\bm{x}}$
mode and its metal feeding structure act as a pair of orthogonal magnetic and electric dipoles. By appropriately combining these two dipole modes, the proposed antenna achieves broadside unidirectional radiation with suppressed backward radiation, stable gain, and symmetrical radiation patterns. A prototype antenna with an electrical size of
${\text {0.36}}{{\bm{\lambda }}}_0 \times $

${\text{0.36}}{{\bm{\lambda }}}_0 \times {\text {0.16}}{{\bm{\lambda }}}_0$
is designed, fabricated, and tested. The measured results show that the proposed design provides stable radiation performances with a peak gain of 7.2 dBi and a front-to-back ratio of more than 20.2 dB within the operating frequency band of 3.0–3.8 GHz, which are in good agreement with the simulated results.