A low-profile ultra-wideband magneto-electric dipole antenna for ground penetrating radar

ABSTRACT

Ultra-wideband antennas that operate at low frequencies usually have a large geometry, which makes them very limited in practical engineering application environment where space is often constrained. In this paper, a novel low-frequency low-profile ultra-wideband magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna is designed for the application in ground penetrating radar (GPR) to detect deeply buried targets. The antenna is designed at the operation frequency of 230 MHz, so that the objects that are buried as deep as 1.5 m can be detected. Compared to the traditional low-frequency _antennas, it has a profile as low as 740 mm$\times$140 mm$\times$150 mm ($0.49\mathit{\lambda }\times 0.09\mathit{\lambda }\times 0.10\mathit{\lambda }$). Based on the simulation analysis and validation measurements, the proposed ME dipole antenna has a wide impedance bandwidth for $S_{11}<-10\mathrm{dB}$ from 135 MHz to 382 MHz even when environmental influence is considered. The antenna is further validated with a GPR experiment, where a pipeline with a diameter of about 200 mm at 1200 mm beneath the road surface is successfully detected by an impulse GPR system where the proposed antennas are integrated.

KEYWORDS:

• Ground penetrating radar (GPR)
• low-profile
• magneto-electric dipole
• ultra-wideband (UWB)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author, LW, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China under Grant 2021YFB3900102 and 2023YFF0717500, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62201037 and Grant 62271056 and in part by the BIT Youth Academic Start-up Funding under Grant XSQD-202206001.