Investigations on Ultra Wideband Dielectric Resonator Antennas for Detection of Breast Cancer

Abstract

Microwave Imaging (MWI) is a field that uses the dielectric contrast between the healthy and malignant cells to distinguish between them using microwaves transmitted by antennas. Antennas that operate at the ISM band or UWB are basically utilized to scan the cancer affected body part and collect S parameters which are used to reconstruct the 2D/3D image of the scanned body part. Since the ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has accomplished much consideration in the recent years because of its innate advantages of large bandwidth, low power consumption and high speed, data transmissions over short distances, it is the preferred band of antenna operation for the proposed doctoral research work. Compact antennas that work on UWB technology are therefore in demand to scan the cancer affected human breast and then the collected data can be used to plot a 2D image of the scanned breast area. Therefore, this doctoral research wok presents the design and development of UWB antennas; mainly microstrip patch antennas and dielectric resonator antennas that can be used as sensors to detect the breast cancer at an early stage using Monostatic Radar based Microwave Imaging technique (MRMIT). A MRMIT technique uses a single antenna structure to transmit and receive the backscattered signals from the scanned breast area. Based upon the difference between the received reflected signals from the normal and malignant breast tissues, tumors can be identified. The S parameter data that is collected after the scan of the cancerous tissues is used to plot a dielectric profile of the scanned area. Thus this thesis presents the design and development of a stacked aperture coupled MPA and four DRAs with ultra wideband and miniaturization characteristics. Since the Dielectric resonator antennas (DRA) have advantages over microstrip patch antenna (MPA) in terms of lesser conduction losses, easy construction strategies, and flexibility in the structure to meet the required UWB behavior, they are preferred candidates for the proposed doctoral