A High-Gain Pattern and Beamwidth Reconfigurable Dielectric Resonator Antenna Based on Parasitic Metal Panels

In this communication, a novel pattern and beamwidth reconfigurable cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA) is proposed. The pattern reconfigurable structure is achieved by a pair of 3-D-printed arc-shaped parasitic metal panels, which are capable of high-gain beam scanning with ±24° in the H-plane and ±18° in the E-plane radiation, respectively, without the electrical controlling components. Moreover, by arranging the arc-shaped parasitic metal panels symmetrically, the half-power beamwidth (HPBW) of the antenna can be adjusted from 48° to 79°. The proposed DRA utilizes a stacked multilayer dielectric substrate structure to excite the HEM<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{12\sigma }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> higher-order mode which improves the gain performance. Finally, the antenna achieved the maximum gain of 10.6 dBi in the operating bandwidth. The pattern reconfiguration through mechanical control avoids the extra insertion loss that could result from PIN diodes and allows for a high overlapped bandwidth in different radiation patterns. The measured overlap-operating frequency band and maximum gain of the antenna with different radiation states are 2.17–2.72 GHz (fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 22.49%) and 10.42 dBi, respectively. These values are well suited for the 2.4 GHz ISM band applications.