Title: Investigating a double layer Vivaldi antenna design for fixed array field measurement

Authors: Majid Ostadrahimi, Sima Noghanian, Lotfollah Shafai, Amer Zakaria, Cam Kaye, Joe LoVetri

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202-7165, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada

Abstract: Vivaldi antenna is widely known as a broadband antenna. In this paper, we investigate a modified Vivaldi antenna with improved cross polarisation working in the ultra-wideband (UWB) frequency range (3.1-10.6 GHz) to be used as multiple probes for microwave tomography system. Our study includes investigation of radiation characteristics of the antenna, antenna design steps, fabrication sensitivity effects on the antenna performance and proposing and implementing a twenty-four antenna element system for fast data acquisition, including a novel method for frequency selection in microwave tomography applications. We also studied the fidelity parameter of the antennas inside the twenty-four element setup. The mutual coupling of adjacent elements, in spite of close proximity, is less than -17dB and fidelity variations for the antennas located in front of transmitter are less than 10%.

Keywords: microwave imaging; microwave tomography; MWT; Vivaldi antennas; ultra wideband communications; UWB; polarisation; mutual coupling; multi-static near field measurement; antenna design; broadband antennae; multiple probes; radiation; fast data acquisition; frequency selection.

DOI: 10.1504/IJUWBCS.2010.034309

International Journal of Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems, 2010 Vol.1 No.4, pp.282 - 290

Published online: 31 Jul 2010 *

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