Enhanced radiation characteristics for antipodal Vivaldi antenna using high permittivity dielectric director

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the influence of higher permittivity dielectric director on the radiation performances of an antipodal Vivaldi antenna. An elliptical dielectric director with high permittivity is inserted in an antipodal Vivaldi antenna aperture in order to ameliorate the radiation characteristics of the antenna. Due to the capacity of elevated permittivity dielectric to confine and guide energy in the desired direction, an increment of 4[Formula: see text]dB in the gain of the antenna is obtained. This antenna, which covers an ultra-wide frequency band of 146.8% from 2.3[Formula: see text]GHz to 15[Formula: see text]GHz, has approximately regular radiation patterns with reduced side lobe level and narrower beamwidth. In the interest to achieve radar application necessities, the proposed antenna is exploited to develop an antenna array which consists of four connected elements. Adding dielectric directors can significantly enhance the radiations characteristics of the antenna and reduce the mutual coupling inter-elements. So using four elements with dielectric director in the antenna array can achieve the same results obtained with eight elements without directors. This can decrease the used number of elements that form the antenna array.