Wide 3-dB beamwidth step-walled rectangular dielectric resonator antenna

Wide angular coverage antennas despite being a requirement for many recent safety applications are a design challenge. Applications like Automotive Radars, GPS and telemetry all need an antenna with wide half-power beamwidths in both principal planes. A novel broadbeam aperture-coupled step-walled rectangular dielectric resonator antenna is proposed. The antenna consists of a central widest ceramic plate with two plates on each side with decreased widths creating stepped or staircase like walls. The dielectric resonator is centered over the feed slot. Two modes TE₁₁₁ ^x and TE₁₁₃ ^x are simultaneously excited. The antenna is shown to yield broadbeam radiation patterns at frequencies between Mode-I and Mode-III resonances. To validate the principal, a prototype is fabricated and measured. The antenna has measured operating frequency band ranging from 5.75 GHz to 7.23 GHz with broadbeam frequency band from 6.1 to 6.6 GHz. The measured xoz and yoz beamwidths range from 120° to 132° with measured gain from 4.5 dB to 5.5 dB in the broadbeam band.