Reproducibility Measurements on Two-plate Transverse Electromagnetic (TEM) Horn Transmit Antenna

Abstract : The performance of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Synchronous Impulse Reconstruction (SIRE) radar is dependent on the performance of the antennas and baluns that make up the radar system's physical aperture. We measured the S11 parameters of six different antenna configurations to find the most suitable transverse electromagnetic (TEM) antenna for our application in the 300 MHz-3 GHz frequency range. In this memorandum report, we show that these TEM transmit antennas can be reproduced consistently with a fairly high degree of accuracy, even when constructed by hand. We accomplished this by comparing the measurements for two fabrications of six antenna configurations, one fabricated by Gregory Smith and the other fabricated by the author. Most of the comparisons between two antenna fabrications are very close. For those antenna configurations for which discrepancies exist, we highlight the discrepancy and provide a potential explanation for why the difference occurred.