RCS Enhancement of Dielectric Resonator Tag Using Spherical Lens

The RCS of flat cylindrical Dielectric Resonators (DR) is investigated and found to be too low for an application of the resonators as tags in a novel indoor localization system at mm-wave frequencies. As a method to increase the RCS of a DR tag, we propose the combination with a constant-index spherical lens. The collimation and scattering properties of this lens type are found suitable for a combination with DRs. The optimum relative permittivity of the lens is found in the range of epsilon(r) =1.6 to 2.8 and the optimum distance between lens surface and DR is found slightly larger than the radius of the DR. RCS enhancement is found to vary with the modes of the DR but increases approximately with the fourth power of the lens radius. However, RCS signatures become corrupted by scattering due to mismatch effects of large lenses such that the lens diameter has to be limited to 4 to 5 wavelengths with the RCS enhancement limited to about 30 to 35 dB. Simulation and experimental verification are performed at a downscaled frequency range from 4 GHz to 7 GHz using lenses of 60 mm and 120 mm diameter made of paraffin wax.