Shape enhancement and size reduction of UWB printed monopole antenna

An ultra wideband (UWB) antenna in enhanced shape and reduced size is proposed for investigation and characterization. The proposed antenna which is intended for surface penetrating radar (SPR) application requiring a narrow period pulse is a monopole type antenna and printed on a dielectric substrate. Based on parametrical studies, the octahedral shape is chosen as it is able to enhance the performance as well as to reduce the size of antenna. The antenna is constructed based on a rectangular microstrip antenna fed by a symmetric T-shaped. Some attempts to investigate and characterize the physical parameter including octahedral patch resizing, transition angle, length of arm, and resistive loading are conducted to achieve the required characteristics and the compactness. From the investigation and characterization results, it shows that the proposed antenna which is deployed on FR-4 Epoxy substrate (relative permittivity of 4.3 and thickness of 1.6mm) with a 50Ω microstrip line feeding technique has the overall size of 50mm × 50mm and satisfies with the operating bandwidth required by the application, i.e. frequency range of 50-5000MHz.