Wideband Fabry-Perot resonator antennas with dielectric EBG structures

This paper presents a new design of a Fabry-Perot resonator antenna (FPRA) with a wide gain bandwidth working in Ku band. A dielectric-based electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structure, which consists of two dielectric substrates and can produce a reflection phase curve versus frequency with a positive slope, is proposed to enhance the bandwidth of the FPRA. For a physical insight of the working principle, the EBG structure is analyzed by using the transmission line theory. The experiments are carried out to confirm the design of the wideband FPRA, and the results demonstrate that the antenna has a 3 dB gain bandwidth over 13.5 GHz to 17.5 GHz, that is, 25.8% of the total bandwidth, with a peak gain of 15 dBi. Besides, the gain band can be covered well by its impedance band for the reflection coefficient (S₁₁) less than -10 dB. The proposed method is effective, and can be easily applied to designs at other frequencies.