Compact Vivaldi Antenna Design at 500MHz for GPR Applications

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to design an antenna that operates at a lower frequency of 500MHz and has a small size suitable for space exploration rovers equipped with Ground Penetrating Radar. This antenna can be used for subsurface investigations of celestial bodies like Moon and Mars. The primary difficulty that lies within designing an antenna for lower operating frequency is its bulky size. To overcome this problem a structural investigation on the design of small size Vivaldi antenna at 500MHz for GPR applications is proposed. The antenna has been designed, optimized and simulated in the HFSS and fabricated on an FR-4 substrate of dimensions 65mm×60mm×1.6mm. The proposed antenna attains a lower return loss of 32dB at the center frequency 500MHz. In this paper, on a conventional Vivaldi antenna a horizontal bar type structure folded with increasing step size and a circular patch in the active plane has been introduced. Furthermore, optimization is carried out to achieve the desired results. Hence, the optimized Vivaldi antenna is presented for use in GPR applications.