Design and Development of Enhanced Gain Aperture Coupled Broadband Biodegradable Dielectric Resonator Antenna for WLAN Applications

Metamaterial loaded star-shaped dielectric resonator antenna (SDRA) fed by aperture-coupled mechanism is used for the enhancement of bandwidth and gain. The star-shaped structure is made-up using biodegradable poly-lactic acid having a dielectric constant (ε_r) of 3.45 and loss tangent (tan δ) of 0.05, which adopt the cost-effective manufacturing i.e. additive manufacturing technique. The alteration in rectangular dielectric resonator antenna to make SDRA is the foundation for broad bandwidth while hybrid exciting-modes are due to feeding of two apertures (slots) of unequal length. Correspondingly, metamaterial i.e. an arrangement of the split-ring resonators have been used for gain enhancement of antenna. The enhanced peak gain of the metamaterial loaded SDRA is more than 12 dBi and the average radiating efficiency is ~ 81%. The proposed antenna attained a broad bandwidth of 41.1% ranging from 4.15 to 6.3 GHz which is suitable for the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards and C-band wireless communications. The proposed antenna has also offer circularly polarized characteristics at 6 GHz. Thus such an antenna with a trait of circular polarization can be promising for other wireless applications.