IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
13, 2014
An Improved Vivaldi Antenna for Vehicular Wireless
Communication Systems
Shan Hong He, Member, IEEE, Wei Shan, Chong Fan, Zhi Chao Mo, Fu Hui Yang, and Jun Hua Chen
Abstract—In order to improve the directivity of the antenna
used in vehicular IEEE 802.11a ( MHz) wireless
local area networks (WLAN), and make the antenna be more likely
installed in the same shark-fin-like radome that can be applied in
various antennas of different vehicular wireless communication
systems, an improved Vivaldi antenna with planar directors in
front of the aperture of the tapered slot and transverse slots is
proposed and fabricated. These measured and simulated results
show that the improved Vivaldi antenna increases by 1.5 dB of
gain compared to that of the normal one on average in IEEE
802.11a ( MHz) WLAN. It also has high directivity
in IEEE 802.11b ( MHz) WLAN, IEEE 802.11y
( MHz) WLAN, or other wireless communication
systems (2400-4900 MHz). Moreover, the improved Vivaldi an-
tenna can enhance the ability to resist the polarization distortion
caused by the car roof, which acts as a big ground plane compared
to the conventional one.
Index Terms—Broad-bandwidth, high directivity, polarization
purity, Vivaldi antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE AUTOMOTIVE industry has long before seen the
prospects of using efficient communication, between
automobiles and between automobiles and roadside infrastruc-
ture. It would elevate the quality and reliability of information
available to drivers and road users, leading to enhanced safety,
mobility, and efficiency. However, all these advantages rely
on reliable communication links, both among vehicles and
between vehicles and the roadside infrastructure. Thus, the
performances of the antennas mounted on vehicles are crucial
to the overall system robustness of such a dynamic com-
munication system. Not only should they satisfy necessary
specifications of frequency, bandwidth, polarization, and radi-
ation, but also fit seamlessly with the automotive design, be
easily compatible with other existing systems, and have a low
production cost [1]. Therefore, antennas of various vehicular
wireless communication systems are expected to have the
same radome, which restricts the dimension of these designed
antennas. At the same time, a vehicular antenna with high gain
Manuscript received May 14, 2014; revised June 28, 2014; accepted July 23,
2014. Date of publication July 25, 2014; date of current version August 12,
2014.
S. H. He and W. Shan are with School of Electrical Engineering and Infor-
mation, Anhui University of Technology, Ma’anshan 243002, China (e-mail:
antennaeng@163.com).
C. Fan is with Department of Communication Engineering, Nanjing Univer-
sity of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China.
Z. C. Mo, F. H. Yang and J. H. Chen are with the CETC ShangHai Microwave
Communication Co., Ltd., ShangHai 201802, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2343215
1536-1225 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1505
can not only strengthen the capability of anti-multipath inter-
ference under the complicated electromagnetic environment,
but also increase the sensitivity.
The Vivaldi antenna has been widely studied and applied due
to its simple structure, light weight, wide band, and high effi-
ciency. The Vivaldi antenna is a traveling-wave endfire planar
antenna featuring wide bandwidth [2]. However, the directivity
of a conventional Vivaldi antenna is low. In order to improve the
directivity, some approaches have been proposed. Using array
of Vivaldi [3] is the conventional way to obtain high direc-
tivity, but it is complicated and bulky for vehicular application.
Using photonic band-gap structure that can be formed by mi-
cromachining the substrate with holes [4] or placing conductor
strip gratings on both sides of the substrate [5] can improve the
gain of the antenna, but the antenna proposed in [4] no longer
has the planar structure, and the antenna presented in [5] has
an overlong radiating slot due to the small flare angle of slot.
These antennas reported in [4] and [5] cannot be installed in the
same shark-fin-like radome that can be applied in various ve-
hicular wireless communication systems. Another method is to
employ a “director” in the aperture of the tapered slot, which
can focus on the energy in the endfire direction and improve
the directivity. The “director” can be formed using dielectric
that has a higher permittivity than the antenna substrate [6] or
anisotropic zero-index metamaterials on both sides of the an-
tenna substrate [7]. However, the dielectric “director” is costly,
and it also cannot achieve the planar structure. The anisotropic
zero-index metamaterials are complicated to construct, and they
expand the dimension of antenna.
In this letter, an improved Vivaldi antenna with planar direc-
tors and transverse slots to improve directivity for IEEE 802.11a
( MHz) is proposed. In the design, a compact
and planar structure is the prerequisite so that the designed an-
tenna can be installed in the given radome. These measured
and simulated results for IEEE 802.11a ( MHz)
are presented and compared to those of the conventional Vi-
valdi antennas. It also can be used in IEEE 802.11b (
MHz), IEEE 802.11y ( MHz), or other wire-
less communication systems with higher gain compared to the
conventional Vivaldli antenna. In addition, the improved Vi-
valdi antenna can enhance the ability to resist the polarization
distortion caused by the car roof, which acts as a big ground
plane compared to the conventional one.
II. ANTENNA GEOMETRY AND DESIGN
The surface current of the conventional Vivaldi antenna
mainly distributes along the edge of the taper slot, and its
adjacent metal layer usually acts as negligible role [8]. In
order to improve directivity without extension in dimension,
as shown in Fig. 1(a) and (b), four slots are inserted on both
1506
Fig. 1. (a) Configuration of proposed antenna. (b) Photograph of the antenna.
(c) Configuration of the Y-Y transition.
sides of the adjacent metal layer, and three planar directors that
slightly increase the dimension of the antenna are employed in
the aperture of the tapered radiating slot. The Y-Y transition
between the unbalanced microstrip line and the balanced slot-
line is adopted. The slotline with a circular slotline open circuit
is cut in the ground plane of the microstrip line with short
circuit at the end of one of its branches. The parameters of the
transition are shown in Fig. (c). The antenna is fabricated on a
1.0-mm-thick FR-4 substrate with a relative permittivity of 4.6.
Main optimum structural parameters are marked in Fig. 1(a)
and (b), and the exponential gradient equation is selected as
the shape of the radiation slot. Dimensions of the antennas are
set to be mm, and it is mounted on the ground
plane of the radome with dimension of mm nearly
without any space. The corner of the ground plane is removed
so that the antenna can be installed in the gradient radome.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Measured and Simulated Results of IEEE 802.11a
( MHz) WLAN
This proposed antenna is designed for the IEEE 802.11.a
( MHz) WLAN. In order to illustrate how the
mechanism’s improved structure improves its directivity, we
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014
Fig. 2. Measured and simulated radiation patterns of E-plane and H-plane at
(a) 4900, (b) 5500, and (c) 6000 MHz.
verify the reliability of these simulated results by the commer-
cial software HFSS. In this letter, the measured and simulated
radiation patterns of IEEE 802.11a ( MHz) WLAN
are presented in Fig. 2(a)–(c). It can be seen that these measured
radiation patterns show a good agreement with these simulated
results, which verifies the reliability of this simulation. Fig. 3
shows the measured and simulated gain for different cases, in
which Case-1 denotes the improved Vivaldi antenna, Case-2
denotes the conventional Vivaldi antenna with three planar
directors, and Case-3 is the conventional Vivaldi antenna.
The measured and simulated gains show that the improved
Vivaldi antenna increases by 1.0 dB of gain compared to that
of Case-2 and 1.5 dB compared to that of Case-3 on average in
the operating frequency band. Fig. 4 gives the surface current
distributions of the improved Vivaldi antenna (Case-1) and
the conventional Vivaldi antenna (Case-3). From Fig. 3, we
HE et al.: IMPROVED VIVALDI ANTENNA FOR VEHICULAR WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Fig. 3. Measured and simulated gains of different cases.
Fig. 4. Simulated surface current distribution of (a) Case-1 and (b) Case-3.
Fig. 5. Measured VSWR.
can clearly observe that there is nonnegligible surface current
around these slots and directors that produce high directivity.
B. Effect of the Car Roof on the Performance of IEEE 802.11a
( MHz) WLAN
The measured and simulated results mentioned above do not
take into account the effect of the car roof. The car roof is
equivalent to a ground plane and acts as a mirror plane, which
will inevitably affect the performance of the antenna. When
the antenna is used in wide bandwidth and vertical polariza-
tion, this effect will increase. The measured VSWR of Case-1
with ground plane is compared to that of Case-1 without ground
plane in Fig. 5. It can be seen that the ground plane has little
1507
Fig. 6. Simulated E-plane radiation patterns of Case-1 with ground plane.
Fig. 7. Simulated gains of Case-1 with ground plane and without ground plane.
Fig. 8. Simulated gains of Case-1 and Case-3 with ground plane.
effect on VSWR. However, Fig. 6 shows that the E-plane radi-
ation pattern has been tilted, and its sidelobe level (SLL) also
increases. Yet, the appropriate increase in SLL can expand the
coverage area in elevation plane, which results in an improve-
ment on stability of communication system. The measured and
simulated gains of Case-1 with ground plane are compared to
those of Case-1 without ground plane in Fig. 7, which shows
that the ground plane further improves directivity.
C. Broadband Characteristics Within the Frequency Band of
2400–4900 MHz
This improved Vivaldi antenna applied in IEEE 802.11.a
( MHz) WLAN has been investigated. In order
to investigate the broadband characteristics of this proposed
Vivaldi antenna for future applications, its performance of
other frequency bands is also studied in this section. The
1508 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

the highest scanning frequency band is selected as 802.11.a

( MHz) WLAN. Fig. 5 shows the measured
VSWR from 2400 to 6500 MHz. The maximum VSWR is
less than 2.2, which illustrates that the improved antenna still
keeps its inherent broadband radiating characteristic. Fig. 8
shows the simulated gain of Case-1 with ground plane and
Case-3 with ground plane from 2400 to 4900 MHz. From
Fig. 8, it can be seen that the improved Vivaldi antenna has
higher directivity than the conventional one. Fig. 9(a) and (b)
shows the E-plane radiation patterns of copolarization and
cross-polarization of Case-1 with ground plane from 2400 to
4900 MHz, respectively, and these of Case-3 with ground plane
are plotted in Fig. 9(c) and (d). Fig. 9(a) and (c) illustrates that
the SLLs in the half-plane above the ground plane of Case-1
are more appropriate to achieve the tradeoff between gain and
radio coverage than that of Case-3. In addition, the front-to-rear
ratio of radiation pattern of Case-1 is lower than that of Case-3,
which is beneficial to interference suppression. Fig. 9(b) and
(d) shows that when the car roof, which will change the surface
current distribution and distort the polarization purity, is taken
into account, the cross-polarization level of Case-1 is lower
than that of the conventional one on the whole.

IV. CONCLUSION
An improved Vivaldi antenna with transverse slots and planar
directors designed for IEEE 802.11a ( MHz)
WLAN is proposed and fabricated. It improves the directivity
of IEEE 802.11a ( MHz) WLAN together with
other wireless ( MHz) systems. In addition, it can
obtain more appropriate SLLs in the half-plane above ground
plane and lower front-to-rear ratio than the conventional Vivaldi
antenna. Simultaneously, its ability to resist the polarization
distortion caused by the car roof has been enhanced. These
measured and simulated results verify these improvements. The
small and planar structure ensures its installation in the same
radome, which can be applied in various antennas of different
vehicular communication systems.

Fig. 9. Simulated E-plane radiation patterns of (a) copolarization of Case-1
with ground plane, (b) X-polarization of Case-1 with ground plane, (c) copo-
larization of Case-3 with ground plane, and (d) X-polarization of Case-3 with
ground plane.
lowest scanning frequency band determined by its dimension
is set at IEEE 802.11.b ( MHz) WLAN, and
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