Agile Dielectric Resonator Antenna with an Integrated Feeding Circuit for Polarization Diversity

A polarization agile dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with an integrated feeding circuit is presented. The developed prototype for L-band frequencies utilizes a dielectric resonator (DR) with a relative dielectric constant of 27 and two bonded FR-4 feeding circuit PCBs. This dielectric resonator circuit system (DRCS) consists of meandered power dividers, delay lines, and surface mount hybrid-couplers which feed four radial slots etched under the cylindrical DR element. This DRCS offers operational bandwidths of 41%, 53%, 15%, and 3% (S11 <-10 dB) for its right-handed circular polarization (RHCP) state, its left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) state, and, its two orthogonal linear polarization (LP) states, respectively. The described DRCS is also compact in size with values of 90.0 × 90.0 × 18.1 mm3 (or 0.3λ0 by 0.3λ0 by 0.07λ0 at the lowest operational frequency). Such a polarization diverse antenna can be used in RF challenging environments as well as GPS/GNSS scenarios where the dominant polarization is not known apriori. Other applications include duplex systems, radar, wireless communications, and signal processing techniques where polarization selectivity of the antenna is of interest.