Investigation on the effects of resistive loading on wrapped bow-tie antennas

Abstract

AbstractThe pulse radiating characteristic of a wrapped bow-tie antenna (WBA) and wrapped resistively loaded bow-tie antenna (WRLBA) is presented for impulse radar applications in this paper. The numerical analysis of the WRLBA is performed by comparing that of the WBA. The wrapped antennas are realized on a flexible substrate. The antennas are fed by an impedance tapered balun, which has an overall transmission loss of −1.4 dB over the balun length. The characteristics of the resistive loading to the wrapped antenna, such as reflection coefficient, reflected pulse in the time domain, voltage standing wave ratio, and input impedance, are experimentally investigated and compared with simulated results. The fidelity factor of the radiated electric field on the boresight direction for the WBA and WRLBA is calculated as 0.82 and 0.96, respectively. The wireless communication ability is evaluated by the transmission coefficient, group delay, boresight gain, and received waveform. The calculated fidelity factor of the received waveform for the WBA and WRLBA is 0.79 and 0.85, respectively. The average and variations of the group delay of both wrapped antennas are observed to be around 2.5 ns and less than 1.5 ns, respectively.