A compact antipodal vivaldi antenna for modern surveillance systems

ABSTRACT

Recent breakthroughs in modern surveillance systems combined with stealth and jamming technologies have led to the development of high-directional and high-gain antennas. This paper presents a compact-sized antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA) consisting of an elliptical shaped radiating flare with rectangular slots at the flare edges for modern surveillance systems. The proposed antenna provides improvements in the antenna characteristics, including a higher front-to-back ratio, increased main lobe gain, reduction in the side lobe level (SLL), and lower frequency limit. The results reveal that at 20 GHz, an improved gain of 3.8 dB and a front-to-back ratio of more than 40 dB have been realised. Additionally, in contrast to the antenna without edge slots, the impedance bandwidth, |S11| < −10 dB of 15 GHz, and a reduction in the lower operating frequency by 36.7% have also been achieved. The prototype antenna is developed and tested to verify with simulation results. The proposed antenna with the miniaturised structure may be suitable for surveillance applications in modern radar systems because of its ultrawide fractional bandwidth, high directive gain, and reduced SLL.

KEYWORDS:

• Antipodal Vivaldi antenna
• front-to-back ratio
• tracking radar
• surveillance systems
• ultrawideband antenna

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.