A Novel Dielectric Resonator Antenna With Applications in Wide-Angle Beam-Scanning Phased Array

A novel Dielectric Resonator Antenna (DRA) with a compact design and a wide half-power beamwidth (HPBW) is presented in this paper. A conformal phased array DRA with a rectangular aperture-coupled feed is used to excite the TE13 delta mode. To enhance directive gain, a 1x4 conformal DRA array configuration is implemented, achieving a 5-dBi improvement over a single element. The conformal array is designed for mounting on a curved surface with a 70 mm radius and supports wide-angle beam scanning from -28 degrees to +28 degrees, with a gain fluctuation of less than 2.5 dBi. The proposed array achieves an impedance bandwidth of 52.7%, covering the frequency range from 5.3 to 9.1 GHz. A peak gain of 13 dBi at 7.2 GHz, along with inter-element isolation better than -25 dB, is obtained. Additionally, it offers more than 90% radiation efficiency across the operational band while maintaining a low-profile structure with a height of 0.1 lambda(0).