Wideband compact dipole antenna for microwave imaging applications

摘要

In this study, the authors present a novel dipole antenna for microwave imaging (MWI) applications. Different from the previous works, the designed dipole is compact while having a wide-impedance bandwidth of 1–4.2 GHz along with a moderate gain. In particular, the largest dimension of the antenna is 6 cm, which is 0.2 wavelength at the very lower end of the operating frequency bandwidth. Furthermore, the resultant design has a cross-polarisation level <20 dB. Important characteristics of the proposed design are given with the simulations through analysis system high-frequency structure simulator. Obtained simulation results are also shown to be consistent with the measurements. In addition to measuring fundamental parameters of the designed dipole, they also test the proposed antenna in a circular MWI system. In this context, several dielectric scatterers are measured in a circular scanner and obtained scattered field measurements are supplied to the well-known contrast source inversion method. Imaging results show that the proposed antenna is quite suitable for MWI applications.