Comparison of Effective Permittivity Retrieval Methods of 3D-Printed Unit Cells for Dielectric Resonator Antenna Applications

Abstract

In this paper, three methods to retrieve the effective permittivity of 3D-printed unit cells for dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) applications are compared: Maxwell Garnett approximation (MGA), S-parameters method, and plane wave expansion method (PWEM). More specifically, three common topologies are studied: simple cubic (SC), body-centered cubic (BCC) and face-centered cubic (FCC). From numerical analyses, we explain which method is the most appropriate for designing a DRA using 3D-printed periodic unit cells.