IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2010 3707

Communications
Broadband Bowtie Dielectric Resonator Antenna
Leboli Z. Thamae and Zhipeng Wu

Abstract—Broadband dielectric resonator antenna, formed by carving

out notches from cylindrical geometry to form bowtie shape and fed by
coaxial probe on one of the notched sides, is presented. The proposed broad-
band bowtie DRA combines shape deformation with low permittivity res-
onator to achieve 10 dB impedance bandwidth of up to 49.4% covering
frequency range of 4.194–6.944 GHz. The simulated and measured radia-
tion patterns are consistent throughout the operational bandwidth.
Index Terms—Bowtie shape, broadband, dielectric resonator antenna
(DRA).

I. INTRODUCTION
Dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) technology has evolved as an
attractive alternative to conventional metallic antennas since its incep-
tion in the early 1980’s using basic geometries [1]–[3]. DRAs offer
advantages of low cost, small size, light weight, low profile, high ra-
diation efficiency and a variety of feed mechanisms. However, being
resonant structures, simple DRAs with low permittivity have an inher-
ently narrow bandwidth of up to 10% [4].
Several bandwidth enhancement techniques such as DRs with multi-
layers of different materials [5] or air-gap modified structures [6]–[9]
have been investigated with observed 010 dB impedance bandwidths
ranging from about 25% to 70%. This letter implements the latter con- Fig. 1. Geometry of cylindrical bowtie DRA; (a) Top view and (b) Panoramic
cept by forming symmetric notches on the DR to create alternative view.
bowtie geometry with broadband characteristics. Numerical analysis
employing CST Microwave Studio (CST MWS) is presented together
with practical measurements using the vector network analyzer (VNA)
and anechoic chamber to validate the simulations.
The concept of bowtie DRA from simple cylindrical DR structure
by creating notches to deform its shape is first introduced in Section II.
A parametric study investigating the effect of notch dimensions, feed
location and DR aspect ratio on the bandwidth of the cylindrical bowtie
DR is carried out in Section III. In Section IV, the optimized structure
for cylindrical bowtie DRA is prototyped and measured and the exper-
imental observations are then discussed in comparison with results of
similar air-gap DRA designs from [6]–[9].

II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION

The geometry of the bowtie DRA, created by carving out symmet-
rical notches of depth d and apex angle , from a cylindrical DR of
dielectric constant "r , radius r and height h is shown in Fig. 1. The
bowtie DR is placed on a 60 mm 2 60 mm ground plane and fed by
Fig. 2. Effect of notch depth d on the input impedance of the cylindrical bowtie
Manuscript received February 20, 2009; revised May 22, 2009; accepted
DRA for p = 8 mm = 90
, and r=h = 10 12 7
= : .
July 18, 2009. Date of publication September 02, 2010; date of current version
November 03, 2010. a 50
coaxial probe of height p along the notch apex. The DR mate-
The authors are with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engi- rial used is the Rogers TMM10i with "r = 9:8. The notch depth can
neering, University of Manchester, Manchester M60 1QD, U.K. (e-mail:
be varied to transform the geometry of the DR into a bowtie modifica-
zhipeng.wu@manchester.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail- tion. It is noted that feed position also varies with d, hence the depth
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. adjustment is expected to have a more distinct effect on the operational
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2010.2071332 impedance bandwidth.

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

3708 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2010

Fig. 5. Photograph of the optimized cylindrical bowtie DRA prototype.

Fig. 3. The dependence of the input impedance on the probe height p for the
cylindrical bowtie DRA at d= 6 5 mm = 90
: , and r=h = 10 12 7
= : .

Fig. 6. Simulated and measured reflection coefficient for the cylindrical bowtie
DRA with d = 6 7 mm = 7 mm = 90
: ,p , and r=h = 10 12 7
= : .

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF SEVERAL AIR-GAP DRAS

Fig. 4. The dependence of the input impedance on the apex angle  for the
cylindrical bowtie DRA at d= 6 5 mm = 7 mm
: ,p and r=h = 10 12 7
= : .

TABLE I
EFFECT OF VARYING THE ASPECT RATIO

Fig. 7. Measured gain of the cylindrical bowtie DRA prototype.

A. Notch Depth
The simulation curves of Fig. 2 show how the antenna input
impedance varies as the notch depth changes with other parameters
fixed. As d increases, the volume of the DR decreases and its shape is
modified, the position of the feeding probe is adjusted and less field
lines are being confined within the DR. It is noted that for smaller
III. PARAMETRIC STUDY values of d such as d = 4:5 mm, six resonances exists within the
CST MWS simulation is used to carry out the parametric study of 3 to 8 GHz range (3.815, 4.17, 5.345, 6.205, 7.19 and 7.43 GHz)
the bowtie DRA to determine the effect of varying the notch depth d, with respective resistances of around 80, 27, 157, 24, 46 and 26
.
the probe height p and its location, the apex angle  and the aspect ratio Increasing d to 6.5 mm shifts the second and fifth resonances to 4.5
r=h on the operational bandwidth. GHz and 6.7 GHz with 41.5
and 53
, respectively, and the response
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2010 3709

Fig. 8. Normalized simulation and measurement xz -plane radiation patterns of the optimized cylindrical bowtie DRA at three selected frequencies.

Fig. 9. Normalized simulation and measurement yz -plane radiation patterns of the optimized cylindrical bowtie DRA at three selected frequencies.

between the two resonances is flattening close to 50

impedance to D. Aspect Ratio
realize broadband operation.
B. Feed Height and Location
The effect of the feed probe height p on the antenna input impedance,
when located on the notch apex as in Fig. 1, is demonstrated in Fig. 3.
The probe height controls the coupling between the feed and DR, re-
sulting in variations in the input impedance with p = 5 mm exciting
only one resonance at 6.82 GHz with mismatched resistance of 109
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
whereas there are four resonances for p = 9 mm with only one (at
5.1 GHz) close to matching at 44
. The probe height of around p = dimensions with a chosen height of 12.7 mm are found to be d =
7 mm yields much improved impedance matching. Locating the feed
along the edge of the bowtie DR to coincide with the y -axis leads to
narrower bandwidth response with the fundamental mode being dom-
inant. Interestingly, offsetting the feed away from the y -axis gives rise
to potential dual or tri-band operation to be explored in future work.
C. Apex Angle
The variation of the bowtie DRA input impedance with the apex
angle  is illustrated in Fig. 4. The simulation curves show that smaller
values of  result in mismatched resonances. For instance, the  = 40
curve demonstrates resonances at 3.98, 4.54, 5.31 and 6.17 GHz with
respective resistances of 139, 28, 82 and 13
. The value of  = 100 implemented with a simple coaxial probe feed.
leads to about six resonances, the third (5.75 GHz) and the fifth (6.85
GHz) having respective resistances of 62
and 46
, which are close band is plotted in Fig. 7, showing variations of about 4.1 to 7.2 dBi. The
to the 50
impedance matching. simulated and measured normalized (maximum = 0 dB) principal
Table I shows the dependence of the simulated bandwidth (BW) as
a function of the bowtie DR aspect ratio (r=h) by varying the DR
height while keeping the radius fixed. It is noted that increasing h
leads to wider impedance bandwidth which saturates around 55% for
r = 10 mm. However, a trade-off between the achievable broadband
operation and practical DR profile has been considered in the final DR
height choice.
From the above parametric study, optimized DRA notch and feed
6:7 mm, p = 7 mm and  = 90 . A bowtie DRA prototype illus-
trated in Fig. 5 has been fabricated and tested to validate the simulation
results. The simulation and measurement reflection coefficient curves
are depicted in Fig. 6 with respective 010 dB impedance bandwidths
of 53.7% (4.166–7.226 GHz) and 49.4% (4.194–6.944 GHz). The mea-
sured bandwidth is about 4% less than the simulated one but both re-
sponses show consistent variations with frequency.
Examples of notched DRAs are given in Table II for comparison with
the proposed bowtie DRA. The bowtie DRA demonstrates higher band-
width relative to the first two designs but the next two designs possess
more bandwidth due to the fact that they employ special feeding struc-
tures to aid the wideband operation while the proposed bowtie DRA is
The measured gain along the 0 angle across the operating frequency
3710 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2010
xz and yz planes radiation patterns for the cylindrical bowtie DRA are
given in Figs. 8 and 9 at the frequencies of 4.5, 5.7 and 6.8 GHz. The
simulated co-polar radiation patterns for both planes portray reason-
able agreement with their measured counterparts for the selected three
frequencies. On one hand, the xz -plane patterns demonstrate broad-
side radiation at the first two frequencies with measured cross-polar
levels around 10 dB down on the boresight and the backlobes slightly
shifted away from 180 . However, the higher 6.8 GHz xz -plane pat-
tern is slightly distorted, shifting the maximum radiation direction to
050 . On the other hand, the yz -plane patterns are largely symmet-
rical and broadside at all the three centre frequencies with backlobe
radiation of about 010 dB or better. The measured cross-polar levels
are more than 10 dB down from the boresight, though they do reach
similar levels to co-polar counterparts at some directions. Leakage ra-
diation from the probe feed is the likely cause of the xz -plane pattern
distortions and high cross-polar levels away from the boresight in the
yz -plane patterns and can be suppressed by using dual-feed techniques
as in [10].
V. CONCLUSION
Broadband bowtie DRA with symmetrical notches carved from
cylindrical DR geometry has been studied both numerically and ex-
perimentally. Measurement results from the prototype give impedance
bandwidth of about 49%, ranging from 4.194 to 6.944 GHz. From the
parametric study, it has been observed that the depth of the notches,
which modifies the structural shape and varies the position of the feed,
the height of the coaxial probe feed and its location together with the
notch apex angle and DR aspect ratio are important in enhancing the
impedance bandwidth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are grateful to Rogers Corporation for their support with
the provision of high frequency laminates used for the dielectric res-
onator antenna.
REFERENCES
[1] S. A. Long, M. W. McAllister, and L. C. Shen, “The resonant cylin-
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AP-31, no. 3, pp. 406–412, May 1983.
[2] M. W. McAllister, S. A. Long, and G. L. Conway, “Rectangular dielec-
tric resonator antenna,” Electron. Lett., vol. 19, pp. 218–219, 1983.
[3] M. W. McAllister and S. A. Long, “Resonant hemispherical dielectric
antenna,” Electron. Lett., vol. 20, pp. 657–659, 1984.
[4] A. Petosa, A. Ittipiboon, Y. M. M. Antar, D. Roscoe, and M. Cuhaci,
“Recent advances in dielectric-resonator antenna technology,” IEEE
Antennas Propag. Mag., vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 35–48, Jun. 1998.
[5] A. A. Kishk, B. Ahn, and D. Kajfez, “Broadband stacked dielectric res-
onator antennas,” Electron. Lett., vol. 25, pp. 1232–1233, Aug. 1989.
[6] A. Ittipiboon, A. Petosa, D. Roscoe, and M. Cuhaci, in An Investigation
of a Novel Broadband Dielectric Resonator Antenna, Baltimore, MD,
1996, pp. 2038–2041.
[7] A. A. Kishk, R. Chair, and K. F. Lee, “Broadband dielectric resonator
antennas excited by L-shaped probe,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
vol. 54, no. 8, pp. 2182–2189, 2006.
[8] X.-L. Liang and T. A. Denidni, “H-shaped dielectric resonator antenna
for wideband applications,” IEEE Antennas Wir. Propag. Lett., vol. 7,
pp. 163–166, 2008.
[9] L. N. Zhang, S. S. Zhong, and S. Q. Xu, “Broadband U-shaped dielec-
tric resonator antenna with elliptical patch feed,” Electron. Lett., vol.
44, no. 16, 2008.
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0018-926X/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
Miniaturized Dual-Band CPW-Fed Annular Slot Antenna
Design With Arc-Shaped Tuning Stub
Meng-Ju Chiang, Tian-Fu Hung, Jia-Yi Sze, and Sheau-Shong Bor
Abstract—The design of a miniaturized dual-band CPW-fed annular slot
antenna with arc-shaped tuning stub is proposed. The proposed feeding
structure, which includes the arc-shaped tuning stub and a 50- trans-
former, is connected to the extremity of the CPW fed-line, achieving the
dual-band input impedance matching. The return loss of the proposed de-
sign exhibits that two wide operating bands are over the bandwidths of
30.8% and 24.0%, respectively. By modifying the angle of the arc-shaped
tuning stub, the first-higher order resonant mode can be shifted to the lower
frequency band to combine with the fundamental mode of the annular
slot, achieving the broadband operation with the bandwidth of 3048 MHz
(78.4%). Moreover, the miniaturized design indicates an embedded strip is
protruded from the ground plane into a slit, revealing the center frequen-
cies of two resonant bands from 2752 to 1738 MHz (size reduction 60%) and
5022 to 3760 MHz (size reduction 44%), respectively. Two resonant bands
of the prototype show the broadside radiation patterns with the maximum
peak antenna gains of 3.8 dBi and 5.1 dBi, respectively.
Index Terms—Antenna feeds, coplanar waveguides, multifrequency an-
tennas, Slot Antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
A literature survey shows that the printed slot antenna with the
tremendous bandwidth is a promising candidate for realizing broad-
band or multiple-band to accommodate multi-standard services. For
a conventional CPW-fed slot antenna design, the impedance band-
width can reach about 20%. Several structures have been reported to
demonstrate the superior performances of slot antenna for the desired
wideband requirements, which include wide square slot [1], bow-tie
slot [2], rotated slot [3], and tapered ring slot [4], [5], indicating the
impedance bandwidths larger than 100%. Consequently, the hybrid
slots design shows an impedance bandwidth of 49% [6]. By using the
feeding structure with a widened tuning stub [7] or fork-like tuning
stub [8], a square slot antenna for broadband operation achieves the
impedance bandwidth of more than 60%. Ali et al. [9] proposed a
folded slot with adjacent semicircular slot and a tuning stub to improve
the bandwidth, achieving a 42.8% bandwidth, and Liu et al. [10]
reported the similar approach to improve the impedance bandwidth of
100%. Simply by protruding four metallic strips into slot, the proposed
CPW-fed slot antenna can have an impedance bandwidth larger than
60% [11], [12].
On the other hand, the dual-band operation is in demand for various
applications. Since these applications are used simultaneously in many
Manuscript received March 14, 2009; revised February 04, 2010; accepted
April 12, 2010. Date of publication August 30, 2010; date of current version
November 03, 2010.
M.-J. Chiang is with the Department of Antenna and Wireless System Inte-
gration, HTC Corporation, Xindian City, Taipei County 231, Taiwan (e-mail:
mengjuchiang@gmail.com).
T.-F. Hung is with the Department of Electrical and Communica-
tions Engineering, Feng-Chia University, Taichung 407, Taiwan (e-mail:
gogogo262626@gmail.com).
J.-Y. Sze is with the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department,
Chung Cheng Institute of Technology, National Defense University, Taoyuan
335, Taiwan (e-mail: szejy@ccit.edu.tw).
S.-S. Bor is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Feng-Chia Uni-
versity, Taichung 407, Taiwan (e-mail: ssbor@fcu.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2010.2071333