Integrated antennas for wireless applications

Over the last two decades, the development of new printed and other planar antenna technology has fundamentally changed microwave engineering and microwave and millimeter wave communications. New planar antennas can be printed on substrates with minimal cost and processing. Low profile, highly efficient dielectric resonator antennas (DRA) have shown great potential with large bandwidth capabilities, low loss and flexibility over a large frequency range. In many new applications, these compact and low profile antennas, which can also be integrated with active devices, offer a practical and inexpensive solution to previously used configurations of waveguide or reflector-based antenna systems. Increased present and future demands by commercial wireless applications at microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies require new innovations to exploit all the potential and flexibility that these classes of antennas could offer. This paper discusses these related issues by presenting several examples of some of the innovations in integrated planar active and passive antennas, and their related design and operations issues