Design of Ultra-Wideband Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna for Microwave Imaging Applications

The design of an ultra-wideband antipodal Vivaldi antenna to operate at frequency range from 2.1 GHz-27 GHz for microwave imaging applications is proposed in this paper. It includes regular triangular slits and opening rate of the aperture that extends the lower end of frequency band limitation and improves the radiation characteristics. Good radiation characteristics in terms of improvement of front-to-back ratio and gain are achieved. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and tested. The result of measurement of magnitude of reflection coefficient is in a good agreement with the simulated result. Feasibility of this antenna for the use in microwave imaging technique to obtain high-range resolution images of construction materials is demonstrated.