IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO.

10, OCTOBER 2004

[7] K. Nakaoka, Experiments of circularly polarized printed slot array antenna, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., pt. H, vol. 136, no. 1, pp. 7072, Feb.
1989.
[8] K. Iigusa, T. Teshirogi, M. Fujita, S. Yamamoto, and T. Ikegami, A
slot-array antenna on coaxial cylinder with a circularly-polarized conical
beam, Electronics and Communications in Japan, pt. 1, vol. 83, no. 3,
pp. 7487, Mar. 2000.
[9] J. Hirokawa, M. Ando, and N. Goto, Analysis of slot coupling in a radial
line slot antenna for DBS reception, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., pt. H, vol.
137, no. 5, pp. 249254, Feb. 1990.
[10] S. K. Koul, Millimeter-Wave and Optical Dielectric Integrated Guides
and Circuits. New York: Wiley, 1997.
[11] R. M. Knox and P. P. Toulios, Integrated circuits for the millimeter
through optical frequency range, in Proc. Symp. Submillimeter Waves,
New York, Mar. 1970, pp. 497516.
[12] F. K. Schwering and S. T. Peng, Design of dielectric grating antennas
for millimeter-wave applications, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory
Tech., vol. 31, pp. 199209, Feb. 1983.
[13] H. Tehrani, M. Li, and K. Chang, Broadband microstrip to dielectric
image line transitions, IEEE Microwave Guided Wave Lett., vol. 10,
pp. 409411, Oct. 2000.
[14] A. Schary, G. C. Dalman, and C. A. Lee, Dielectric waveguide-tocoplanar transmission line transitions, U.S. Patent 5 225 797, July 6,
1993.
[15] M. Guglielmi, Radiation from a metal strip grating on a dielectric slab,
Ph.D. dissertation, Polytechnic Univ., New York, NY, Mar. 1986.
[16] R. J. Mailloux, Phased Array Antenna Handbook. Boston, MA:
Artech House, 1994, pp. 3637.

Design Method for Aperture-Coupled Microstrip Patch

Antennas on Textured Dielectric Substrates
D. Psychoudakis, Y.-H. Koh, J. L. Volakis, and J. H. Halloran
AbstractTextured dielectric substrates made with multiple ceramics
are now being introduced in antenna design. This paper presents a design technique for fabricating aperture-fed patch antennas with textured
dielectrics. An example microstrip antenna is fabricated using this technique and measurements are compared to simulations. We show that by
combining two ceramic materials a new composition is formed that has
different properties from the original ceramics. These properties are measured and used in the fabrication of the antenna.
Index TermsCeramics, dielectric materials, electrically small antennas,
microstrip antennas.

I. INTRODUCTION
Microstrip patch antennas have been attractive due to their conformal properties. So far, they have been mostly fabricated on
substrates such as FR4 and Duroid which typically exhibit dielectric constants no greater than 10. However, recent developments in
ceramic materials have enabled us to experiment with much higher
dielectric constants which are also of low loss [1]. Moreover, mixtures
Manuscript received October 16, 2003.
D. Psychoudakis, Y.-H. Koh, and J. H. Halloran are with The University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122 USA (e-mail: dpsycho@umich.edu).
J. L. Volakis is with The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122
USA and also with The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43212-1191 USA.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2004.834452

Fig. 1.

2763

Textured dielectric substrate consisted of two ceramic materials.

of multiple ceramics exhibiting different dielectrics can allow the

development of dielectrics not available from off-the-shelf. Synthetic
dielectrics have been used before for microstrip antenna applications,
but in these cases, the dielectric modication consisted of holes
drilled in ceramics or other dielectrics [2], [3], and [4]. In so doing,
the mechanical rigidity of the substrate is compromised and there is
difculty in printing the patch on the substrate.
Totally lled textured dielectrics fabricated using more than one material have only recently been considered in antenna design to facilitate
the objective of antenna miniaturization [5]. The mixture of multiple
dielectrics results in a texture whose effective dielectric constant can
be fabricated to t pre-specied design criteria. This is important since
such an approach provides for full design exibility where the dielectric constant is part of the design process instead of being xed a priori.
In this communication, we introduce a design procedure for fabricating microstrip patch antennas using textured dielectric ceramic substrates and show that these substrates can be used as dielectric materials
of arbitrary dielectric constant. The initial design procedure is outlined
for evaluation of the effective dielectric constant. A nal design is then
produced and measured. More specically, a prototype aperture-coupled antenna is designed and built using a textured ceramic substrate
composed of two high contrast ceramic materials. Measurements are
compared with simulations for the preliminary test design and the nal
fabricated design.
II. EVALUATION OF DIELECTRIC CONSTANT
The textured dielectric sample used as substrate is shown in Fig. 1. It
is a square ceramic tile 3 by 3 cm and 0.33 cm thick with 36 holes evenly
positioned in a square lattice and lled with a second ceramic material.
The base material is Barium Titanate (BT) of "r = 30 and the 3 mm diameter holes are lled with Bi-Ba-Nd Titanate (BBNT) with "r = 100.
The average (by volume), dielectric constant is "ave = 49:78, but this
is an initial estimate since a more accurate value is needed for the nal
design. It is also expected that the effective dielectric constant will vary
with different applications and at different frequencies. Therefore, the
value of this average dielectric constant is an indication of the effective
value to be used as a starting position in an iterative process for determining "e .
Next, we proceed to determine "e for a printed antenna application
based on the return loss of a square patch antenna. The rst step is to
assemble a feed platform to make preliminary measurements to precisely extract "e . The feed network consists of a quarter wavelength
radial stub with a 50-
transmission line printed on Duroid RT6006
("r = 6:2) with thickness 0.254 cm. The dimensions and geometry

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2004

Fig. 4.

Fig. 2. Feed geometry for preliminary test measurements.

Final aperture fed patch antenna design geometry.

error to nd an effective " that emulates the textured dielectric substrate. The program was written based on [7] with some modications.
It is worth mentioning that the dielectric constant value is varied to
match resonant frequency and the loss tangent is varied to match the
bandwidth or the quality factor of the resonance. This procedure predicted an effective dielectric constant of 46.2 and a loss tangent of
0.0004. As expected, the dielectric constant value is different from the
average by volume value mentioned earlier. The reasons for the differences are the nonuniform eld under the patch, the patch positioning
and the nonperfect contact between ceramic tile and ground plane.
The curves in Fig. 3 show that the patch is overcoupled to the aperture, and this was to be expected because the feed network was designed
for cases where the patch size would be larger. Nevertheless, the resonance is distinguishable and can be exploited to evaluate the effective
dielectric constant. In the next section, this effective dielectric constant
is used for the nal design of a well matched antenna.
III. FINAL FABRICATION

Fig. 3. Preliminary measurements and matched simulation results on the test

feed network.

are shown in Fig. 2. The radial stub was chosen to have a 120 sectoral angle and was designed based on [6]. This allowed for repeated
use of the feed network with various ceramic substrates with different
"r and for an extended frequency region of operation. For these dimensions, the operating frequency for the radial stub feed is around 1.2
GHz. Aperture feeding was chosen because drilling in the ceramics is
extremely difcult.
After painting a 1.5 by 1.5 cm patch on the textured ceramic tile
using ECCOCOAT1 C-110-5 silver paint, the tile is positioned on the
feed network to carry out the preliminary measurements. Because of
the surface mismatches, a dielectric silicone grease was used as a temporary adhesive between the ceramic and the ground plane. This minimizes the gap between the two layers and imitates the epoxy resin to
be used in the nal fabrication.
The preliminary measurements are shown in Fig. 3. It is seen that the
measured data are matched to the simulations (based on the method of
moments with a multilayered Greens Function) after some trial and
1ECCOCOAT is a registered trademark of Emerson & Cuming, 46 Manning
Road, Billerica, MA USA.

Once the effective dielectric constant is evaluated for a textured dielectric tile, the design process can be initiated. Using results from the
previous section, we proceeded to design a new feed network for the
ceramic substrate. Also, on using the same analysis tool above and the
dielectric constant value predicted from the preliminary measurements,
a new feed network was designed and fabricated on a Duroid RT6006 of
the same thickness. The new feed geometry is shown in Fig. 4. For the
design we used a simple quarter wavelength transmission line stub instead of the radial stub. The process was primarily focused on achieving
the best possible match using a constant size patch. Our simulation and
measurements (assuming a 50
feed) are given in Fig. 5. As seen,
the nal antenna has an operating frequency of 1.243 75 GHz and a
010 dB return loss bandwidth of 13.75 MHz or 1.1%. It is important
to note that the area of the patch on this textured substrate as compared
to a patch on a typical Duroid 5880 (with "r = 2:2) was reduced by 20
times (7 cm by 7 cm patch on a Duroid 5880). However, there are some
differences between measurement and simulation in the nal antenna.
The noted differences between simulation and measurements are
likely attributed to the preparation of the temporary and nal designs.
For the temporary patch, silicone grease was used to emulate the presence of the epoxy adhesive. However, in the nal design, a clamp was
used to secure the ceramic sample on the ground plane. This caused
the sample to adhere closer to the ground plane and, thus, a smaller
gap existed between the ceramic substrate and the ground plane. Consequently, the overall effective dielectric constant increased in the nal
antenna and the resonance was lowered. Nevertheless, had we used the
average permittivity of 49.78 the predicted resonance would be much
lower, and more specically, above 8% in error. This should be compared to the 1% error obtained with the new two step approach.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2004

2765

[4] E. A. Navarro, A. Luximon, I. J. Craddock, D. L. Paul, and M. Dean,

Multilayer and conformal antennas using synthetic dielectric substrates, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat, vol. 51, pp. 905908, Apr.
2003.
[5] D. Psychoudakis, A. Knapp, G. Kiziltas, J. L. Volakis, and J. Halloran,
Textured LTCC substrates for printed antenna miniaturization and
bandwidth improvement, in Proc. IEEE Soc. Int. Conf. Antennas and
Propagation, vol. l.3, Columbus, OH, June 2003, pp. 375378.
[6] H. A. Atwater, Microstrip reactive circuit elements, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-31, pp. 488491, June 1983.
[7] P. L. Sullivan and D. H. Schaubert, Analysis of an aperture coupled
microstrip antenna, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat, vol. AP-34, pp.
977984, Aug. 1986.

Circularly Polarized Dielectric Resonator Antenna Excited

by a Shorted Annular Slot With a Backing Cavity
K. W. Leung
AbstractExcitation of the circularly polarized dielectric resonator
antenna (DRA) using a shorted annular slot is studied in this paper. The
new method is demonstrated using a hemispherical DRA. The exact DRA
Greens function is used in the formulation, and the method of moments
is employed to solve for the equivalent magnetic current in the slot. The
input impedance, axial ratio, and eld patterns are found. Measurements
were carried out to verify the calculations, with good results. The effects of
the radius and shorting width of the slot are investigated, and the design
procedure of the CP DRA is discussed.
Fig. 5. Return loss and input impedance for the nal antenna design.

Overall, the nal antenna is well matched ( S11 = 030 dB) at resonance and has a reasonable bandwidth. The design process is also very
reliable and was adapted for other substrates with similar results.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this communication, a textured ceramic substrate was used to fabricate an aperture fed square patch antenna. The design and fabrication
process was outlined and measurements were compared to simulations.
The proposed antenna is an example of how a combination of two ceramic materials can be used as a substrate with dielectric properties
different than those of the individual materials. Analysis using a uniform substrate showed that the textured substrate performed in much
the same way as the effective uniform substrate. A design process that
measures the effective dielectric constant to be used for the nal antenna design and fabrication was demonstrated.
REFERENCES
[1] C. Reilly, W. J. Chappell, J. Halloran, K. Sarabandi, J. Volakis, N.
Kikuchi, and L. P. B. Katehi, New fabrication technology for ceramic
metamaterials, in Proc. IEEE Antennas and Propagation Soc. Int.
Symp., vol. 2, San Antonio, TX, 2002, pp. 376379.
[2] G. P. Gauthier, A. Courtay, and G. M. Rebiez, Microstrip antennas on
synthesized low dielectric-constant substrates, IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propagat., vol. 45, pp. 13101314, Aug. 1997.
[3] J. S. Colburn and Y. Rahmat-Samii, Patch antennas on externally perforated high dielectric constant substrates, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 47, pp. 17851794, Dec. 1999.

Index TermsCircular polarization, dielectric resonator antenna,

method of moments (MoM).

I. INTRODUCTION
Since the work on the cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (DRA)
was reported by S. A. Long et al. in 1983 [1], the DRA has attracted
the attention of many researchers [2]. The DRA has a number of advantages such as its small size, low loss, lightweight, low cost, and
ease of excitation. Early work on the DRA was primarily concentrated
on the generation of linearly polarized (LP) elds. Recently attention
has been shifted to the study of the circularly polarized (CP) DRA.
The CP system has a distinct advantage over the LP system in that the
former is less sensitive to the antenna orientation and propagation effect. Different methods of exciting a CP DRA were studied, such as
using quadrature feeds [3], using DRAs of special geometries [4], and
using parasitic patches [5], [6]. Some researchers used a special coupling slot to excite a CP DRA. For example, Huang et al. [7] employed
a cross slot to excite a CP DRA disk. Alternatively, Leung and Mok [8]
used a perturbed annular slot to excite a cylindrical CP DRA elds. The
work [7], [8], however, was purely experimental. Recently, a shorted
annular coupling slot has been proposed to excite the CP DRA [9]. The

Manuscript received March 12, 2003; revised October 7, 2003. This work was
supported by the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China under Project: CityU 1136/00E.
The author is with the Department of Electronic Engineering, City University
of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong (e-mail: eekleung@cityu.edu.hk).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2004.834445

0018-926X/04$20.00 2004 IEEE