Wideband and high gain linear 3-element cylindrical dielectric resonator (CDR) array antenna is designed and proposed for 802.11a wireless local area network (WLAN) system applications. The mutual coupling mechanism is used to excite the middle element of the CDRA array which enhances the 10 bandwidth and reduces the back lobe level of the proposed antenna without using reflector. The other two neighboring elements are excited by rectangular shaped aperture slots placed on the ground plane, while the slots themselves are excited through the microstrip line. The designed array antenna performance is analyzed using a CST microwave studio. The maximum directivity of 9.6 dBi has been achieved at operating frequency of 5.5 GHz. 2-D and 3-D radiation pattern results are also reported in this paper. Designed antenna array is fabricated and tested. The comparison between the proposed and previous work is also tabulated in this paper. Copyright © 2013 ACM.