A linear antenna array for UWB applications

A uniformly spaced linear antenna array was investigated for UWB applications. A planar UWB dipole antenna was selected as an array element, and simulated with both FDTD and MoM. A source pulse was optimized to make full use of the FCC allocated UWB bandwidth. It was proven that the pulse optimized for a single antenna element could also be applied to all of the array in the sense of complying with emission limits. Three different radiation patterns were examined for arrays with different numbers of elements and different element spacings. For all three patterns, a narrow main lobe beam width was achieved by increasing the array size, either by increasing the number of elements or the element spacing. However, the latter raises the sidelobe level. Among all the patterns for a given array configuration, the peak value pattern gave the narrowest beam width of the main lobe, and the lowest sidelobe level.