Low-Cost Foldable Printed RGW Wideband MIMO Antenna With Additively Manufactured Dielectric Resonator

This work introduces, for the first time, a wideband, low-cost, foldable printed ridge gap waveguide (PRGW) origami antenna with an additively manufactured dielectric resonator (DR) for multi-input multioutput (MIMO) applications, operating from 12 to 15 GHz. The mechanical foldability is achieved using a surrogate hinge architecture, allowing the antenna to fold nearly 360° without mechanical or electromagnetic (EM) failure, thus enabling beam reconfigurability. Using a multipermittivity DR based on low-cost polylactic acid (PLA) materials with ϵ_r1 =2.72 (100% infill) and ϵ_r2 =1.24 (18% infill), the TE11, TE21, and hybrid mode B are excited, and thus, wideband impedance bandwidth is achieved. The proposed compact MIMO antenna achieves high isolation of 40 dB, with a gain of 7.5 dBi at 13.5 GHz and a radiation efficiency of 85%. Experimental validation confirms that the measured results align well with the simulated results over the operating frequency band.