Design of a Wide-Beamwidth Pixelated Dielectric Resonator Antenna Using a Modified Stepped-Impedance Filter to Suppress Harmonics
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
At present, there is no test data such as dielectric constant and tangent loss angle of the substrates of Rogers or Taconic in the terahertz band. The work of this paper is very interesting.
I have some questions.1. Can the parameters of the quartz material be tested using the setup built in the paper?
2. Is it possible to measure the parameters of the low frequency band and verify with the parameters in the product manual?
3. According to the measurement results, is this shoe dielectric board suitable for circuit fabrication in the terahertz frequency band?
Author Response
Dear editor of Applied Sciences,
I would like to thank you very much for your disposition on my paper (applsci-1800018, title: “Design of a wide-beamwidth pixelated dielectric resonator antenna using a modified stepped-impedance filter to suppress harmonics”). Based on the reviewer’s comments, the paper has been revised. The revised sections are notated in highlighted text in the PDF file. The detailed responses for the review comments are attached in a separated file. We greatly value this chance to revise our manuscript.
Your consideration is very much appreciated.
Best regards,
Keum Cheol Hwang, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Sungkyunkwan University
2066, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon
Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 440-746
Tel: +82-31-290-7978
Fax: +82-31-290-7978
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
- The novelty of the work is unclear, is it in the proposed DRA geometry? However, the DRA has a considerably heigh profile of 60 mm. How does this compare with the DRAs in the cited references in terms of size and weight? On the other hand, the results clearly demonstrate that suppressing the higher order modes by using the filter didn’t contribute to the wider HPBW.
- Please add a comment with respect to reference [1].
- Lines 4-5: The comment “To prevent significant higher-mode radiation and harmonics from occurring in the DRA”, You can control the DRA dimensions or feeding slot to make sure that only the fundamental mode is excited.
- Line 14: The comment “a DRA has many higher-order modes; accordingly, the beam patterns of antennas that are radiated in the fundamental mode are directional” is in contrast with the radiation patterns presented in Figure 6, which demonstrate the patterns have the same HPBW with and without higher order modes at the operating frequency band.
- Line 17, “some modes have low gains while wide half-power beamwidths (HPBW) can be observed in others”, low gain are associated by a wide HPBW by default.
- What are the excited modes in Figure 5(a)? They can be determined using the eigen mode solver of any 3D simulator such as CST and HFSS. It will be useful if the modes’ field distribution is shown in the manuscript.
- The authors need to show that it is only the fundamental resonance mode that is excited within the required frequency range after adding the filter.
- Lines 124-125; there is no notable impact of suppressing the higher order mode on the radiation point as mentioned in Line 129 of the same page. This really demonstrates that the filtering process didn’t improve the HPBW.
- Figure 8(b); why a high gain of 5 dBi is achieved at 2.5 GHz when there is no matching at this frequency? In addition, the results of this figure demonstrate a rapid decrease in the gain across the matching bandwidth. This demonstrates an unstable DRA performance across the achieved bandwidth.
- The radiation efficiency needs to be included.
- The given gain in Table 3 increases with frequency, which contrasts with the simulated and measured gains in Figure 8(b).
- The results need more in-depth discussions.
Author Response
Dear editor of Applied Sciences,
I would like to thank you very much for your disposition on my paper (applsci-1800018, title: “Design of a wide-beamwidth pixelated dielectric resonator antenna using a modified stepped-impedance filter to suppress harmonics”). Based on the reviewer’s comments, the paper has been revised. The revised sections are notated in highlighted text in the PDF file. The detailed responses for the review comments are attached in a separated file. We greatly value this chance to revise our manuscript.
Your consideration is very much appreciated.
Best regards,
Keum Cheol Hwang, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Sungkyunkwan University
2066, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon
Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 440-746
Tel: +82-31-290-7978
Fax: +82-31-290-7978
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In the submitted paper entitled “Design of a wide-beamwidth pixelated dielectric resonator antenna using a modified stepped-impedance filter to suppress harmonics,” the authors propose an interesting design of the dielectric resonator antenna. The complete antenna is designed including the input low pass filter. The Paper is well written, and I believe the paper will be interesting for a wider audience. A minor revision is required. All comments are listed below.
1. The dimension of the designed LPF should be shown in the paper.
2. The gain is shown in a very wide band. The gain should be shown in the bandwidth of the interests. It seems that are some variations in the range of interest 2.96-3.44 GHz
3. Authors should comment on the radiation efficiency of the proposed antenna?
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
I would like to thank you very much for your disposition on my paper (applsci-1800018, title: “Design of a wide-beamwidth pixelated dielectric resonator antenna using a modified stepped-impedance filter to suppress harmonics”). Based on the reviewer’s comments, the paper has been revised. The revised sections are notated in highlighted text in the PDF file. The detailed responses for the review comments are attached in a separated file. We greatly value this chance to revise our manuscript.
Your consideration is very much appreciated.
Best regards,
Keum Cheol Hwang, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Sungkyunkwan University
2066, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon
Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 440-746
Tel: +82-31-290-7978
Fax: +82-31-290-7978
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The submitted manuscript proposes a wide-beamwidth pixelated dielectric resonator antenna design with a harmonic suppression filter.
1. The introduction should be improved, more literature review should be conducted, and a lot of work was reported regarding harmonic suppression (should be cited).
2. The authors have published [a] which was based on a pixelated dielectric resonator antenna with circular polarization. the difference between the submitted design and the design in [a] should be mentioned in the revised manuscript.
3. From Fig. 3, there is not much difference between the proposed filter and the step-impedance design. Why authors have modified the step-impedance design?
4. The reported gain in Fig. 8(b) shows the gain value of 7 dBi, while the gain value from the measured radiation pattern in Fig. 9 is much lower. Why?
5. In Fig. 8, Fig. 8(a) does not exist. please correct
6. Please comment on the efficiency of the proposed design.
7. How to extend the element design to an array? what will be the spacing between elements of the array? what is the max. scanning angle without grating lobes?
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
I would like to thank you very much for your disposition on my paper (applsci-1800018, title: “Design of a wide-beamwidth pixelated dielectric resonator antenna using a modified stepped-impedance filter to suppress harmonics”). Based on the reviewer’s comments, the paper has been revised. The revised sections are notated in highlighted text in the PDF file. The detailed responses for the review comments are attached in a separated file. We greatly value this chance to revise our manuscript.
Your consideration is very much appreciated.
Best regards,
Keum Cheol Hwang, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Sungkyunkwan University
2066, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon
Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 440-746
Tel: +82-31-290-7978
Fax: +82-31-290-7978
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 5 Report
This paper presents a pixelated DRA with a filter to suppress harmonics. The comments are as following:
1. As in Fig. 6, the radiation pattern of the DRA with filter is quite different with that of the DRA without filter in the down-hemisphere @ 3.25 and 3.3 GHz. However, it shows a quite opposite situation @ 6.5 GHz. Please explain what happened and why.
2. The fabrication of the proposed DRA is complex as shown in the manuscript. Is there any simple solution for the manufacture?
3. Please provide a comparison for the performance of the proposed antenna with the state-of-the-art designs in this area to highlight the contribution of your design.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
I would like to thank you very much for your disposition on my paper (applsci-1800018, title: “Design of a wide-beamwidth pixelated dielectric resonator antenna using a modified stepped-impedance filter to suppress harmonics”). Based on the reviewer’s comments, the paper has been revised. The revised sections are notated in highlighted text in the PDF file. The detailed responses for the review comments are attached in a separated file. We greatly value this chance to revise our manuscript.
Your consideration is very much appreciated.
Best regards,
Keum Cheol Hwang, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Sungkyunkwan University
2066, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon
Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 440-746
Tel: +82-31-290-7978
Fax: +82-31-290-7978
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors addressed most of my review comments. However, the following comments still need to be addressed
Comment 4, with respect to Line 14 of the original manuscript, the authors' response does not address this comment at all. Instead, the response is focused on the optimisation, which I didn't mention in that comment.
Comment 7, there are two dips in the S11 graph within the same frequency range and this sometimes indicates the existence of another mode. Please check the magnetic field distribution inside the DRA at those dips to confirm it is indeed one mode that has been excited.
Comment 8, with respect to lines 124-125 of the original manuscript, there is no impact on the radiation patterns and the achieved lower gain should be associated with a wider beamwidth which is not evident in the far field pattern.
Comment 9, with respect to Figure 8(b) of the original manuscript, the authors' mentioned the radiation pattern changes as the frequency is increased, which demonstrates an unstable operation across the bandwidth and should be mentioned in the text.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
I thank you for comments. Based on the comments, the paper has been revised. The revised sections are notated in highlighted text in the PDF file. The detailed responses for the review comments are attached in a separated file. We greatly value this chance to revise our manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The manuscript has been improved. Thank you.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
I thank you for comments.
