Characterization of Vivaldi antennas utilizing a microstrip-to-slotline transition

To take maximum advantage of integrated circuit techniques, completely planar geometry should be chosen for tapered slot antennas. This is the reason that the transition used in the present study is microstrip-to-slotline instead of finline to slotline or some other nonplanar transition. The authors investigate the microstrip-to-slotline transition and report on experimental results for Vivaldi antennas of various lengths and output widths. The Vivaldi antennas were designed to operate at 10 GHz and fabricated on Duroid 5870. The directivity in the E- and H-plane for the optimized antenna is shown. The values for the directivity compared favorably to the curves produced by F.J. Zucker (1961) which are the standards for determining whether tapered slot antennas behave as well as optimized traveling-wave antennas.<<ETX>>