Dielectric Resonator - Historical Overview

Historical Overview

In the late 19th century, Lord Rayleigh demonstrated that an infinitely long cylindrical rod made up of dielectric material could serve as a waveguide. Additional theoretical and experimental work done in Germany in early 20th century, offered further insight into the behavior of electromagnetic waves in dielectic rod waveguides. Since a dielectric resonator can be thought of as a truncated dielectric rod waveguide, this research was essential for scientific understanding of electromagnetic phenomena in dielectric resonators. In 1939 Robert D. Richtmyer published a study in which he showed that dielectric structures can act just as metallic cavity resonators. He appropriately named these structures dielectric resonators. Richtmyer also demonstrated that, if exposed to free space, dielectic resonators must radiate because of the boundary conditions at the dielectric-to-air interface. These results were later used in development of DRA (Dielectric Resonator Antenna). Due to World War II, lack of advanced materials and adequate manufacturing techniques, dielectric resonators fell in relative obscurity for another two decades after Richtmyer's study was published. However, in the 1960s, as high-frequency electronics and modern communications industry started to take off, dielectric resonators gained in significance. They offered a size-reducing design alternative to bulky waveguide filters and lower-cost alternatives for electronic oscillator, frequency selective limiter and slow-wave circuits. In addition to cost and size, other advantages that dielectric resonators have over conventional metal cavity resonators are lower weight, material availability, and ease of manufacturing. There is a vast availability of different dielectric resonators on the market today with unloaded Q factor on the order of 10000s.