Characterization of UWB transmit-receive antenna system

An ultra-wideband (UWB), stripline-fed Vivaldi antenna is characterized both numerically and experimentally. Three-dimensional far-field measurements are conducted and accurate antenna gain and efficiency as well as gain variation versus frequency in the boresight direction are measured. Using two Vivaldi antennas, a free-space communication link is set up. The impulse response of the cascaded antenna system is obtained using full-wave numerical electromagnetic time-domain simulations. These results are compared with frequency-domain measurements using a network analyzer. Full-wave numerical simulation of the free-space channel is performed using a two step process to circumvent the computationally intense simulation problem. Vector transfer function concept is used to obtain the overall system transfer function and the impulse response.