A Low-Profile Dielectric Resonator Antenna Array for OAM Waves Generation at 5G NR Bands

Nur Akmal Abd Rahman; Shehab Khan Noor; Imran Mohd Ibrahim; Mohd Najib Mohd Yasin; Arif Mawardi Ismail; Mohamed Nasrun Osman; Shaiful Bakri Ismail

doi:10.3390/mi14040841

A Low-Profile Dielectric Resonator Antenna Array for OAM Waves Generation at 5G NR Bands

Micromachines (Basel). 2023 Apr 13;14(4):841. doi: 10.3390/mi14040841.

Authors

Nur Akmal Abd Rahman¹, Shehab Khan Noor¹, Imran Mohd Ibrahim², Mohd Najib Mohd Yasin¹, Arif Mawardi Ismail¹, Mohamed Nasrun Osman¹, Shaiful Bakri Ismail³

Affiliations

¹ Advanced Communication Engineering (ACE) Centre of Excellence, Faculty Electronic Engineering Technology, Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), Kangar 01000, Malaysia.
² Centre for Telecommunication Research and Innovation (CeTRI), Faculty of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), Durian Tunggal 76100, Malaysia.
³ Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of Marine Engineering Technology (UniKL-MIMET), Dataran Industri Teknologi Kejuruteraan Marin, Bandar Teknologi Maritim, Jalan Pantai Remis, Lumut 32200, Malaysia.

Abstract

This paper presents the generation of orbital angular momentum (OAM) vortex waves with mode +1 using dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) array. The proposed antenna was designed and fabricated using FR-4 substrate to generate OAM mode +1 at 3.56 GHz (5G new radio band). The proposed antenna consists of 2 × 2 rectangular DRA array, a feeding network, and four cross slots etched on the ground plane. The proposed antenna succeeded in generating OAM waves; this was confirmed by the measured radiation pattern (2D polar form), simulated phase distribution, and intensity distribution. Moreover, mode purity analysis was carried out to verify the generation of OAM mode +1, and the purity obtained was 53.87%. The antenna operates from 3.2 to 3.66 GHz with a maximum gain of 7.3 dBi. Compared with previous designs, this proposed antenna is low-profile and easy to fabricate. In addition, the proposed antenna has a compact structure, wide bandwidth, high gain, and low losses, thus meeting the requirements of 5G NR applications.

Keywords: 5G New Radio (NR); 5G communications; dielectric resonator antenna; orbital angular momentum; uniform circular array.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by a publication incentive grant from the Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP). This work also was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education through the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) under grant number FRGS/1/2020/ICT09/UNIMAP/02/2. This research also was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) through FRGS Grant FRGS/1/2020/TK0/UTEM/02/65 and UTeM Grant JURNAL/2020/FKEKK//Q00057.