A Novel Design and Development of a Strip-Fed Circularly Polarized Rectangular Dielectric Resonator Antenna for 5G NR Sub-6 GHz Band Applications

Usman Illahi; Javed Iqbal; Muhammad Irfan; Mohamad Ismail Sulaiman; Muhammad Abbas Khan; Abdul Rauf; Inam Bari; Mujeeb Abdullah; Fazal Muhammad; Grzegorz Nowakowski; Adam Glowacz

doi:10.3390/s22155531

A Novel Design and Development of a Strip-Fed Circularly Polarized Rectangular Dielectric Resonator Antenna for 5G NR Sub-6 GHz Band Applications

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jul 25;22(15):5531. doi: 10.3390/s22155531.

Authors

Usman Illahi¹, Javed Iqbal^{1

2}, Muhammad Irfan³, Mohamad Ismail Sulaiman⁴, Muhammad Abbas Khan⁵, Abdul Rauf⁶, Inam Bari⁷, Mujeeb Abdullah⁸, Fazal Muhammad⁹, Grzegorz Nowakowski¹⁰, Adam Glowacz¹¹

Affiliations

¹ Electrical Engineering Department, FET, Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan 29050, KP, Pakistan.
² School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Nibong Tebal 14300, Penang, Malaysia.
³ Electrical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Najran University, Najran 61441, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Advanced Telecommunication Technology, Communication Technology Section, British Malaysian Institute, Universiti Kuala Lumpur, Gombak 53100, Selangor, Malaysia.
⁵ Department of Electrical Engineering, Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences, Quetta 87300, Pakistan.
⁶ Department of Electrical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, H-12, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan.
⁷ Systems Engineering Department, Military Technological College, Muscat 111, Oman.
⁸ School of Aeronautical and Electrical Engineering, College of Aeronautical Engineering, National University of Science and Information Technology, Risalpur 24080, Pakistan.
⁹ Electrical Engineering Department, University of Engineering and Technology, Mardan 23200, Pakistan.
¹⁰ Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cracow University of Technology, Warszawska 24 Str., 31-155 Kraków, Poland.
¹¹ Department of Automatic Control and Robotics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer 22 Science and Biomedical Engineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, A. Mickiewicza 30, 23-059 Kraków, Poland.

Abstract

In this article, a rectangular dielectric resonator antenna (RDRA) with circularly polarized (CP) response is presented for 5G NR (New Radio) Sub-6 GHz band applications. A uniquely shaped conformal metal feeding strip is proposed to excite the RDRA in higher-order mode for high gain utilization. By using the proposed feeding mechanism, the degenerate mode pair of the first higher-order, i.e., TEδ13x at 4.13 GHz and TE1δ3y, at 4.52 GHz is excited to achieve a circularly polarized response. A circular polarization over a bandwidth of ~10%, in conjunction with a wide impedance matching over a bandwidth of ~17%, were attained by the antenna. The CP antenna proposed offers a useful gain of ~6.2 dBic. The achieved CP bandwidth of the RDRA is good enough to cover the targeted 5G NR bands around 4.4−4.8 GHz, such as n79. The proposed antenna configuration is modelled and optimized using computer simulation technology (CST). A prototype was built to confirm (validate) the performance estimated through simulation. A good agreement was observed between simulated and measured results.

Keywords: 5G NR band; Sub-6 GHz; axial ratio; dielectric resonator antennas; strip-fed antennas.

Grants and funding

The APC of the journal was supported by the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cracow University of Technology and by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Republic of Poland (grant No. E-1/2022).