International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882

Volume 4 Issue 4, April 2015

DESIGN OF DIELECTRIC RESONATOR ANTENNA FOR

MICROWAVE TOMOGRAPHY
Sivaprasath.K1, Dinesh.S2
PG Scholar, Communication Systems, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sri Shakthi
Institute of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, India 1
Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sri Shakthi Institute of
Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, India 2

Abstract
Antennas plays an important role in communication and
used for many applications since many decades ago. Its
contribution towards telecommunication, wired,
wireless, satellite, mobile, medical applications are
momentous and getting progressed from day to day life.
In recent years, researchers have been attracted towards
the implementation of compact size antennas deployed
over portable communication equipments .This project
presents the design of compact sized DR (Dielectric
Resonator
Antenna)
with
dual-polarization
characteristics for use in a (3-D) Microwave imaging
and to collect coplanar and cross-polar responses. The
antenna structure was designed successfully using CST
MICROWAVE STUDIO, a software package for
electromagnetic analysis and design in the high
frequency range. The broadside radiation and dual
polarization are achieved by exciting the fundamental
mode of the DRA as well as by using two elements of
the DRA that are perpendicular to each other. Compared
to the conventional rectangular DRA, the proposed
antenna is reduced in size by a factor of 6.5. The
proposed DRA offers a measured bandwidth of 75%
(2.65.5 GHz). The performance and radiation
characteristics of the antenna are verified experimentally
using CST. The designed DRA can employed for
Microwave Tomography (MWT) prototype or
microwave imaging. MWT an emerging modality that
holds promise for playing an important role in medicine
for scanning purposes like tumour detections we
considered here.
Keywords: Coplanar Response, Cross Polar Response,
Dielectric Resonator Antenna, Microwave Tomography.

I.INTRODUCTION
Microwave Tomography (MT) is an emerging
modality that holds promise for playing an important
role in medicine. This technology exploits the functional
and physiological information encoded in dielectric

properties as a way of distinguishing and characterizing

different tissues and or pathologies. MT system may
consist of only a single transmitter /receiver antenna or a
multiplexed array of antennas which may be
repositioned for generating more data. The basic
operation of the system is based on illuminating an
object-of-interest (OI) by a transmitting antenna, and
collecting the scattered fields at various receiving
locations. So the efficiency of MT wholly depends on
antenna design. This paper focused on designing a
robust Dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) that plays a
vital role in MT. DRA antenna is fabricated from lowloss microwave dielectric material, the resonant
frequency of which is predominantly a function of size,
shape, and material permittivity, mostly used at
microwave frequencies and higher, that consists of a
block of ceramic material of various shapes, mounted on
a metal surface which is a ground plane.
Radio waves are introduced into the inside of the
resonator material from the transmitter circuit and
bounce back and forth between the resonator walls,
forming standing waves. The walls of the resonator are
partially transparent to radio waves, allowing the radio
power to radiate into space. Here the light weight, small,
capable of receiving Dual polarized dielectric resonator
antenna which operates in the bandwidth between (2.65.52 GHz) is proposed and studied.

II. ANTENNA DESIGN ANALYSIS

Many issues have to be considered while
designing antenna for microwave tomography. In MT
penetration depth may decrease as frequency is
increased, but at low frequency volume of antenna
increase by the factor of 8.Fields are less confined for a
low dielectric permittivity and hence it is more difficult
to couple the mode inside the resonator. The Antenna
radiation efficiency is more affected by the losses as the
dielectric permittivity increase. For low dielectric
material even in case of a high loss material the radiation

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4 Issue 4, April 2015

efficiency remains higher than 50. Thus to operate with

wide bandwidth application r=10 is appropriate.
Materials chosen for the dielectric substrate is R03010
with dielectric constant 10.2

required [10]. However, the proposed DRA has a

thickness of 2.56 mm and provides a volume reduction
factor of about 6.7 from the conventional rectangular
DRA. The size of the DRAs can be further reduced if
material with a much higher dielectric constant is used.

III.SINGLE POLARIZATION ELEMENT

First single polarized dielectric resonator
antenna is designed. The design of single polarized DRA
is shown in fig 1. Coaxial connector has many
advantages over many feeding techniques, it offers good
coupling and impedance can be easily optimized by
changing the length and height of the probe. SMA
connector is used for feeding the DRA antenna, inner
conductor of SMA connector is attached to conducting
strip through a hole into a back of thick ground plane.
The radiation characteristics are affected by the DRA
dimensions and the feed parameters, which could affect
the separation of the resonance frequencies of different
modes from each other. The dielectric resonator with
dielectric constant 10.2 and dimensions 34 34 2.56
mm is chosen for design. The smallest value of the
dimension represents the thickness, which is
commercially available. The thickness dimension is not
considered a variable design parameter as it is found to
be suitable for required operating bandwidth. By using
these optimized values, the fundamental mode of the
simple DR at 3.5 GHz is excited to provide broadside
radiation patterns.. The DR is placed above a ground
plane of length of 122.69 mm.

Fig 2: Probe excitation view

IV. DUAL POLARIZED DRA

In order to capture both polarization two elements of
above DRA is placed perpendicular to each other with an
isolation gap of 0.1 mm so that fabrication will become
easy, Dual polarized DRA design is shown in fig 6, both
DRA was excited by the same SMA connector as shown
in the fig 5.The two elements are placed on the ground
plane in positions that make each element
nonsymmetrical with the ground plane. However, the
square bounding of the two elements is located in the
middle of the ground plane. The designed dual paired
DRA is simulated and the results are examined.Thus the
dual dielectric bodies with SMA connector are used to
collect the coplanar and cross polar responses and it
indicates the purpose for microwave tomography.

Fig1: Single Polarized DRA Design

In Fig. 3, the computed reflection coefficient for the
single-polarized antenna is provided. The singlepolarized DRA operates in the frequency range of 2.9
4.8 GHz. The computed radiation patterns for E-plane
and H-plane show broadside radiation within the whole
bandwidth. Samples of the radiation patterns at, 3.5 GHz
is shown in Fig.3.It should be stated that in a
conventional design of a rectangular DRA with similar
materials and dimensions, in order to resonate at 2.6
GHz frequency, the DRA with a thickness of 17 mm is
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Fig 3. Computed reflection coefficient of single

polarized DRA

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4 Issue 4, April 2015

Fig 4 .E field pattern of single polarized DRA

Fig 7 .S parameter analysis

Fig 5 .SMA connector and its dimension

Fig 8 .Farfield E pattern at port 1

Fig 9. farfield H pattern at port 1

Fig 6. Dual polarized DRA

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4 Issue 4, April 2015

IV .MICROWAVE TOMOGRAPHY
Microwave Tomography (MWT) is an emerging
modality that holds promise for playing an important
role in medicine. This technology exploits the functional
and physiological information encoded in dielectric
properties as a way of distinguishing and characterizing
different tissues or pathologies.Here we consider a
tumour detection of brain.
The CST Microwave studio has a rich library of
materials including some biomaterials such as bone, fat
and skin. Fig 10 shows the anatomical slice of human
head which is basically composed skin, fat, skull, grey
matter and white matter and the next indicates the CST
phantom human brain model.

Fig 11 .DRA placed quadrant wise I,II,III,IV

Initially a single pair of antenna is placed at the corner of
a first quadrant to illuminate the radio waves over both
human healthy brain (without tumour ) and tumor brain
phantom model. Similar process is carried out for the
remaining three quadrants II,III,IV. At each position
reflected signal by the both healthy brain and tumor
brain are analyzed and it is plotted correspondingly in
Fig12.From the reflected signal variations the tumour
position is identified as shown below in quadrant wise
I,II,III,IV respectively.

Fig 10 CST phantom brain model

The brain phantom model is considered to be divided
into four quadrants . In order to examine microwave
tomography, A tumor model (rad=2 mm, r = 54.06 ,
=1, = 7S/m) is placed within brain model radius of
white matter=10mm, bone thickness=5mm ,fat=1mm ,
skin=1mm ) at location (u=-5, v=0, w=17.5) i.e in third
quadrant and then transmitted and reflected signal is
analyzed by rotating the antenna pair around the brain
model as quadrant wise. Fig 11 illustrates above
explained model.

12 (a) .First quadrant

12(b) .Second quadrant

12(c) .Third quadrant

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4 Issue 4, April 2015

12(d) .Fourth quadrant

Fig 12 Reflected Signal quadrant wise I,II,III,IV
It is verified from the plot that when antenna is apart
from tumor, the reflected signal from healthy brain and
tumor brain overlap with each other and indicates no
tumour presents in I,II,IV quadrants.When antenna
moves towards the tumor i.e in third quadrant ,then the
reflected signal from healthy brain and tumor brain
shows large variations as shown in above figure 12(c)
and indicates the tumour presents in third quadrant .
Using this knowledge tumor position can be determined
by rotating the antenna pair around the head.

V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

Connector(SMA) that was used has good
impedance matching with resonator part. S11 at port 1 is
-47.6608 dB at (frequency 3.3014 GHz) i.e. only
0.0017% W is wasted as loss at port 1, similarly at port 2
return loss is 0.0208% W, amount of coupling between
both DRA at frequency 3.3014 is 3.4454% W. The
antenna has back radiation due to the relatively small
size ground plane. To reduce the back radiation, a larger
ground plane can be used. The size of the antenna can be
further reduced by using high permittivity material. The
broadside radiation and dual polarization are achieved by
exciting the fundamental mode of the DRA as well as by
using two elements of the DRA that are perpendicular to
each other. The robust dual polarized DRA was designed
and simulated.Also microwave tomography application
of detecting tumour in brain was examined in CST.
Future work is focused on to fabricate the antenna and to
emulate its performance in real time and this prototype
makes a challenging growth in medical scan system and
ensure a non-invasive beneficial method.

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