5788 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2013

Ultra-Wideband Impedance Matching Technique for

Resistively Loaded Vee Dipole Antenna
Hyemin Yang and Kangwook Kim

Abstract—The resistively loaded vee dipole (RVD) antenna has many ad-
vantages as an ultra-wideband (UWB) radar antenna, especially ground-
penetrating radar. However, it has the drawback of having considerable
reflections at the feed point due to an impedance mismatch between the an-
tenna and the feeding transmission line. In this communication, a matching
network is proposed to reduce the reflection and the design procedure is
presented. The network is composed of two L-sections in cascade: an in-
ductive L-section for high frequency matching and a high-pass type L-sec-
tion for low frequency matching. It is demonstrated that the high-pass type
L-section hardly destroys the high frequency matching. The RVD with the
proposed matching network is implemented and the performance is mea- Fig. 1. The input impedance of the RVD antenna.
sured. The results show that the RVD is matched over the desired band of
500 MHz–3 GHz, and more energy is radiated in the main pulse.
Index Terms—Impedance matching, loaded antennas, resistively loaded type L-section is used for low frequency band matching. The design
vee dipole (RVD) antenna, ultra wideband antenna.
procedure is presented, and performance is confirmed by experiment.

I. INTRODUCTION II. ULTRA-WIDEBAND MATCHING NETWORK

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a short pulse radar which oper-
A. Input Impedance of the RVD Antenna
ates over an ultra-wideband (UWB). Such UWB GPR has useful prop-
erties including fine resolution and deep penetration depth, and so has The RVD antenna has two monopole arms loaded according to the
been used to survey for buried objects such as landmines [1], [2]. A Wu-King profile. The profile can be expressed in terms of the resistance
resistively loaded vee dipole (RVD) antenna is suitable for UWB GPR per unit length of the arm as [14]
systems with further advantages. The RVD antenna, which is typically
loaded with a Wu-King profile, can radiate short pulses and has a low
radar cross section (RCS), which essentially eliminates unwanted re- (1)
flections between the ground and the antenna. Moreover, the RVD is
suitable as an element of an array antenna because of its low weight
where is the resistance per unit length at the feed point, is the
and planar structure [3]–[5].
distance along the arms from the feed point, and is the total length of
Although the RVD with the Wu-King profile is widely used in var-
the arm.
ious GPR applications, the large reflection from the impedance mis-
In this communication, the parameters used for the RVD antenna are
match between the antenna and the transmission line remains a crit-
/m and cm. The resistance profile is discretized
ical problem [6], [7]. Previous studies have introduced a variety of
and implemented using ten surface-mount resistors. The copper por-
impedance matching methods to reduce the antenna reflection [8]–[13].
tions of the arms, whose width is 3 mm, are fabricated by printing the
The most common method is to use a simple L-section matching net-
copper patterns on a 0.4 mm thick FR-4 substrate. The included angle
work, but it only works over a narrow bandwidth around the resonant
of the dipole is [15].
frequency [8], [9]. For broadband matching, the Carlin’s real frequency
Fig. 1 shows the input impedance of the RVD antenna obtained
technique is commonly used [10]–[12]. This method can be applied to
through a method of moments simulation [16]. The figure implies the
various antenna matching applications, but it requires a numerical op-
antenna is difficult to match because of two factors: the antenna has
timization procedure, which may be quite complex. In [13], Iyer et al.
a large negative reactance; and, both the resistance and the reactance
suggested a wideband matching circuit for a non-resonant, short dipole
have a considerable amount of variation in frequency. Given that vari-
antenna; however, a design procedure was not provided, and the resul-
ation is greater at low frequencies, UWB impedance matching of the
tant reflection coefficients were too high to be used in practice.
RVD antenna is more difficult to achieve there than in the high fre-
This communication proposes a systematic approach to designing a
quency band. In this study the antenna matches to the transmission line
UWB matching circuit for RVD antennas. The matching circuit is com-
with the characteristic impedance of over the desired band
posed of two L-section networks connected in cascade: an inductive
of 500 MHz–3 GHz [15], [17], [18].
L-section is used for high frequency band matching and a high-pass
B. Two-Stage L-Section Matching
Manuscript received April 03, 2013; revised June 14, 2013; accepted July 22,
2013. Date of publication August 01, 2013; date of current version October 28, This communication proposes a matching circuit with two L-section
2013. This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea networks connected in cascade: an inductive L-section; and a high-
(NRF-2013M1A3A3A02042444 and NRF-2012R1A1A2003479). pass type L-section. The inductive L-section is employed to match
The authors are with the School of Mechatronics, Gwangju Institute of impedance in the high frequency band. The low frequency impedance,
Science and Technology, Gwangju 500-712, Korea (e-mail: hyang@gist.ac.kr;
however, becomes highly inductive as a result of the inductive L-sec-
mkkim@gist.ac.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail- tion matching. For the low frequency band matching, the high-pass type
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. L-section, which is composed of a series capacitor and a shunt inductor,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2013.2275981 is used. The series capacitor lowers the inductance at the low frequency

0018-926X © 2013 IEEE

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013 5789

Fig. 2. Two-stage matching network: Inductive L-section for high frequency

matching and addition of the high-pass type L-section to extend the matching
to low frequency band.

band with the matching in the high frequency band hardly destroyed. Fig. 3. The input reactance variation due to the addition of a series capacitance
for a number of values.
The shunt inductor further improves low frequency matching.
Fig. 2 demonstrates the two-stage L-section matching circuit. The
i.e., 1.45 GHz, below which the normalized antenna impedance lies in-
configuration of the inductive L-section for the high frequency band
side the circle on the Smith chart. Thus, the values of and
matching is chosen because the antenna impedance normalized by
for the L-section matching are obtained to be 10.1 nH and 60 nH, re-
is outside the circle on the Smith chart at high frequencies
spectively. After the inductive L-section matching, the input reactance
( GHz) [9]. The inductor connected in series reduces the
and the corresponding reflection coefficients are plotted in Figs. 3 and
large antenna reactance, and the shunt inductor allows the antenna
4(a), respectively.
resistance to transform to the characteristic impedance of the transmis-
To extend the matching bandwidth of the RVD, an additional high-
sion line at the resonant frequency . The values of the two inductors
pass type L-section is used, which consists of a series capacitor and
are typically determined as [19]
a shunt inductor as shown in Fig. 2. The series capacitor lowers the
high inductive reactance in the low frequency band as demonstrated in
(2) Fig. 3. The value of the capacitor determines the placement and depth of
an additional dip in the reflection coefficients as displayed in Fig. 4(b),
and the shunt inductor adjusts the dip location and depth such that (4) is
(3) also satisfied at the lowest desired frequency . The parameters
for the high-pass type L-section are determined to be pF and
nH, respectively, and the simulated results of the reflection
where is the resonant angular frequency and and coefficients are shown in Fig. 4(c).
are the resistance and the reactance of the antenna at , respectively.
Although inductive L-section matching is effective at the frequency C. Effect of the High-Pass Type L-Section
, it is not so for UWB impedance matching, because it operates over Fig. 4(c) shows that the two-stage L-section network works over an
a narrow bandwidth. Therefore, this study suggests an alternative ap- ultra-wide bandwidth. This two-stage L-section approach is practical
proach to selecting the values of and . In this approach, is over UWB matching because the second stage of high-pass type L-sec-
varied and is determined according to (3) such that the reflection tion for low frequency matching hardly destroys the high frequency
coefficient satisfies the following condition at the highest desired fre- matching. This can be further illustrated in the following way.
quency : The reflection coefficient at the input of inductive L-section (Fig. 2)
5 can be written as
(4)
(6)
In (3), is determined by
where and are the input resistance and reactance measured
at the input of the inductive L-section, respectively. This satisfies (4)
(5) over the high frequency band as demonstrated in Fig. 4(a).
The reflection coefficient at the input of the high-pass type L-section
where is the frequency where the input resistance of the antenna (Fig. 2) can be written as (7), shown at the bottom of the page, where
and the characteristic impedance of the transmission line are the same, and , and and

(7)
5790 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013

Fig. 5. The photograph of the implemented impedance-matched RVD antenna.

Fig. 6. The equivalent balanced circuit of the designed UWB matching circuit.

hand side of (8) is the same as the reflection coefficient with no .

Equation (8) approaches (6) near the highest frequency because
decreases with dependency. It means that the additional high-pass
type L-section for the low frequency matching can hardly affect the
reflection coefficient established by the inductive L-section.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Fig. 5 shows the matching network implemented at the feed point of
the RVD antenna. Because the RVD antenna has a balanced structure,
the matching circuit is implemented in the balanced form as shown
in Fig. 6. It is then connected to a 50 parallel-plate transmission
line, which is transformed to a microstrip transmission line through an
exponentially tapered balun [9].
The circuit components in the matching network are realized by sur-
face-mount chip inductors and capacitors, which require soldering pads
on the substrate. These pads result in parasitic capacitances between
the components. Thus, the values of the circuit elements are adjusted
as nH, nH, pF, and
Fig. 4. Variation of the reflection coefficients due to the circuit components
addition: (a) and , (b) , and (c) . nH. These adjustments are made based on sim-
ulation, modeling the pads with an Advanced Design System (ADS)
simulator [20].
are the reactances of the series capacitor and the
The reflection coefficients of the implemented RVD antenna with
shunt inductor , respectively. It was demonstrated in Fig. 4(c) that
the matching network are measured with an Agilent E8362B network
(7) satisfies (4) over the entire desired bandwidth. Near the highest
analyzer. The measured reflection coefficients may be expressed as [9]
desired frequency, (7) can be approximated as

(9)
(8)

where is the reflection coefficient at the reference plane shown in

This is done by grouping the terms in the order of , taking the Fig. 5, and , and are the S-parameters of the
highest order, and neglecting the lower order terms. Note that the right- feeding network. To obtain from the measurement, an open-short-
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013 5791

Fig. 7. Comparison of the reflection coefficients of the impedance-matched and Fig. 8. Comparison of the measured reflected voltages at the feed point of the
unmatched RVD antennas. impedance matched and unmatched RVD antennas.

load standard calibration is performed at the reference plane. The cali-

brated result is the reflection coefficients referenced at 50 . The RVD
with the matching network is supposed to be fed by a 200 trans-
mission line. The reflection coefficient for the 200 characteristics
impedance can be obtained from the following

(10)

where and are the characteristic impedances

of the transmission lines [21].
The result is shown in Fig. 7. The graph represents the reflection
coefficients obtained from the simulation and the measurement in dB
scale. The measured result is in good agreement with the simulated
result over the desired frequency band. The desired performance of Fig. 9. Comparison of the measured target-reflected voltages of the impedance
dB is satisfied in the range of 500 MHz–3 GHz with the matched and unmatched RVD antennas.
proposed UWB matching circuit.
Fig. 8 shows the reflected voltages in the feed line in the time domain.
The results are obtained with the incident pulse of the second derivative main pulse than the unmatched RVD. The energy contained in the
Gaussian, which can be expressed as [22] early-time pulse can be obtained as in [22]

(11) (13)

where is the amplitude and is determined by
(12)
The peak frequency GHz is chosen such that the in-
cident pulse has the same power at the edges of the desired frequency
band. In Fig. 8, the reflected signal for the impedance-matched RVD an-
tenna is compared to that for the unmatched RVD antenna. The largest
pulse at represents the voltage reflected at the feed point for the
RVD antenna (dashed line), which is considerably reduced by the UWB
matching circuit (solid line). Only 3.7% of the energy in the incident
pulse was reflected in the impedance-matched RVD, whereas 22.6%
was reflected in the unmatched RVD.
Fig. 9 shows target-reflected voltages normalized by the maximum
amplitude of the incident voltage at the input of the antenna when a
large metal plate at 1 m distance is used as a target. The figure demon-
strates that the impedance matched RVD has higher amplitude in the
where is the received voltage in the time domain, and is
the main pulse width. The results demonstrate that in the impedance-
matched RVD, 86.8% of the received energy is contained within the
main pulse, whereas in the unmatched-RVD, 83.7% of the received
energy is contained within the main pulse. Thus, in the impedance-
matched RVD, a larger portion of the incident pulse energy is radiated,
and a greater amount of radiated energy is concentrated in the main
pulse than in the unmatched RVD.
IV. CONCLUSION
A UWB matching circuit for the RVD antenna was designed and
fabricated for use in the frequency range of 500 MHz–3 GHz. The
matching circuit is made of two-stage L-section networks: the inductive
L-section and the high-pass type L-section. The inductive L-section
was designed to match at the high frequency band and the high-pass
type L-section at the low frequency band. The design procedure was
presented, and the effect of the high-pass type L-section on the high
frequency band matching was discussed.
5792 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013
The RVD with the matching network was implemented and the per-
formances measured. The measured reflection coefficients show that
the RVD is matched over the desired frequency band. In addition, the
measured target-reflected signals demonstrate that more energy is ra-
diated and more energy concentrated in the main pulse.
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0018-926X © 2013 IEEE
Tailoring Radiation Patterns in Broadband With
Controllable Aperture Field Using Metamaterials
Mei Qing Qi, Wen Xuan Tang, He-Xiu Xu, Hui Feng Ma, and
Tie Jun Cui
Abstract—Metamaterials (MTMs) have advantages to control electro-
magnetic (EM) waves with high flexibility. However, the application of
MTMs in antennas has mainly focused on controlling the phases of EM
waves (e.g., to transform spherical waves into planar waves in flat lens and
Luneburg lens). In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a method to
control the radiation patterns in broadband using MTMs. By controlling
the inhomogeneous refractive-index distribution of MTMs, both ampli-
tudes and phases of EM waves on the antenna aperture are designed as
required. We present an example to produce a new MTM lens antenna to
possess high gain and low sidelobes simultaneously. Experimental results
show excellent performance of the antenna in a broad band from 12 GHz
to 18 GHz.
Index Terms—Broadband, gradient index, high gain, lens antennas, low
sidelobes, metamaterials, radiation patterns.
I. INTRODUCTION
The radiation pattern is one of the most important parameters of
antennas, which have been widely used in modern science and tech-
nology. Different applications have different specific requirements to
the radiation patterns (directivity, gain, beam width of main lobe, side-
lobes, and bandwidth). Hence, controlling the radiation patterns is par-
ticularly important. In the traditional microwave and optical commu-
nities, dielectric lenses have been utilized to improve the directivity in
antenna systems. Due to their fundamental property of ‘bending’ the
propagation of EM waves, they are used to narrow the beam from a
relatively small aperture (e.g., from a horn antenna) and consequently
modify the radiation patterns [1]. In a conventional convex lens that
made of uniform material such as glass, spherical waves originated
from the focal point of the lens are converted into collimated beams.
However, there always exist geometry and wave aberrations in a single
conventional lens that limit the lens performance.
One solution to this problem is to use multiple lenses to overcome
most of the optical distortion or aberration. Unavoidably, a multi-lens
system usually has a large volume. Another solution is to use some spe-
cial lenses that are composed of inhomogeneous materials, such as the
Luneburg lens [2], in which aberrations are effectively reduced because
the EM waves are gradually modified. Because the inhomogeneous
Manuscript received March 10, 2013; revised July 05, 2013; accepted July 30,
2013. Date of publication August 07, 2013; date of current version October 28,
2013. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of
China under Grant Nos. 60990320, 60990324, 61138001, 61171024, 61171026,
and 60921063, in part by the National High Tech (863) Projects under Grant
Nos. 2011AA010202 and 2012AA030402, and in part by the 111 Project under
Grant No. 111-2-05.
M. Q. Qi is with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast
University, Nanjing 210096, China and also with the East China Research In-
stitute of Electronic Engineering, Hefei 210088, China.
W. X. Tang, H. F. Ma, and T. J. Cui are with the State Key Laboratory
of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China (e-mail:
tjcui@seu.edu.cn).
H.-X. Xu is with the Missile Institute, Air Force Engineering University,
Xi’an 710051, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2013.2276921