A modified balanced antipodal vivaldi antenna with improved radiation characteristics

A modified corrugated balanced antipodal Vivaldi antenna with director (CBAVA-D) is presented for ultrawideband (UWB) applications in this article. The main features of the antenna, besides an UWB width are high gain, low cross-polarization, and excellent group delay. The new antenna concept, including the hybrid structure of exponential tapered corrugation edge and curving dielectric director with high-dielectric constant is demonstrated, based on simulation and measurement results in both frequency and time domain. The antenna prototype input match is better than −10 dB, the maximal gain of 12.6 dB and the cross-polarization level less than −30 dB in the main beam direction at 1.5–15 GHz band are achieved. In the time domain measured group delay with variation less than ±0.25 ns in the whole operating band is also obtained and exhibited. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:1321–1325, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27558