Experimental investigation of water-based beam reconfigurable dielectric resonator antenna

In the present article, a novel dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) for the control of radiated beams is presented. The proposed DRA is capable of not only reconfiguring the beam width and gain, but also generating single, double, and multiple beams without changing the shape of the antenna. The DRA consists of a cuboid-shaped dielectric resonator having two chambers for storing the water. By varying the water levels in the chambers the beam width can be varied from 56 degrees to 116 degrees and gain 9.8 dBi to 5.86 dBi at the operating frequency of 9.2 GHz. In addition, multiple beams can also be produced by reducing the water level in one chamber. The prototype of the proposed DRA is fabricated and measured for different water levels. The simulated and measured results are in close agreement. The proposed DRA can find its potential application in microwave, space, and wireless communication systems.