Design and Analysis of Dielectric Waveguide Antennas

The dielectric waveguide has received a renewed interest for microwave and millimeter hybrid circuits due to the need for low-loss and low-cost transmission media. At higher frequencies, conventional planar lines such as microstrip and coplanar waveguide (CPW) both suffer from excessive loss and manufacturing tolerance problems Reasons for this limitation are related to the increasing influence of the skin effect and shrinking guide cross sections towards higher frequencies. Both cause high current densities, thus yielding significant conductor losses.

In order to overcome the shortage of the metal losses from the feeding network, the dielectric waveguides have been explored for the antenna design at high frequency ranges. By analyzing the transmission mode inside the substrate waveguide and coupling effect with the printed antennas, several different types of antennas with the dielectric waveguide as the substrate feeder will be designed for specific applications.