Design and Fabrication of High-Gain Ultra Wideband Antenna for Microwave Imaging and Radar Applications
International Conference on Advanced Technologies, Computer Engineering and Science (ICATCES), Karabük, Turkey, 11 - 13 May 2018, vol.1, no.1, pp.1-4, (Full Text)
- Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
- Volume: 1
- City: Karabük
- Country: Turkey
- Page Numbers: pp.1-4
- Akdeniz University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
This paper describes an antenna design that is suitable for microwave imaging and radar applications. Microwave imaging technology has attracted many interests nowadays and it has been used in a variety of applications such as: non-destructive testing and evaluation, through-the-wall imaging, concealed weapon detection at security check points, structural health monitoring and medical imaging. Similarly, radar-based applications have been popular in many areas. The basic idea of using microwave imaging and radar systems is to transmit electromagnetic waves from a transmitting antenna to the target material and receive the scattered waves at a receiving antenna. Thus, the choice of the antenna plays an important role for the system. There is a need for compact sized, low cost and high efficiency antennas which can radiate ultra-wideband signal to transmit short pulses. Furthermore, these antennas should have similarly end-fire radiation pattern to obtain good resolution of the produced images for using both in imaging systems and radar applications. In this study, firstly a conventional compact-sized rectangular patch antenna is designed then various optimizations are performed on that antenna by using High Frequency Structural Simulator (HFSS) software. After that, this antenna is fabricated and tested with Vector Network Analyzer. The fabricated antenna has a simulated and measured bandwidth from 4 GHz to 9 GHz for |S11|<10 dB, respectively. The return loss results show that the good impedance matching is obtained through the working frequency band. The proposed antenna has nearly stable end-fire radiation patterns throughout the frequency range. All of the results exhibit that the designed antenna can be used in high range radar applications and is a good candidate for microwave imaging applications.