IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

12, 2013 417

Research on a Novel Miniaturized Antipodal Vivaldi

Antenna With Improved Radiation
Geer Teni, Ning Zhang, Jinghui Qiu, and Pengyu Zhang

Abstract—A novel antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA) is proposed

in this letter. The addition of regular slot edges (RSE) helps the
antenna lower the low-end operating frequency by 9% with the
dimension unaltered, while the radiation patterns at higher fre-
quencies are improved due to the loaded lens and the choke slot
edges (CSE) configuration at the termination of the flares, which
also contribute to the enhancement of antenna gain. The improved
antenna is fabricated and verified experimentally. The measured
results coincide with the simulated ones perfectly, which proves the
feasibility of the novel design.
Index Terms—Antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA), tapered slot
antenna (TSA), ultrawideband (UWB).

I. INTRODUCTION

W ITH the development of wireless technology, antennas

with ultrawide impedance bandwidth are becoming
more potential in many multiband systems, such as high-speed
wireless communication, high-resolution imaging system, RF
jammer, and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing
systems [1], [2], compared to conventional installation of mul-
tiple antennas on one system. Stable radiation characteristics
are also required in the whole frequency band concerned. A
good candidate for such applications is double ridge guide
horn (DRGH) antennas, which have been studied and utilized
widely, such as the antenna investigated in [2] and [3]. How-
ever, DRGH antennas are relatively large, heavy, and expensive
to manufacture. The planar Vivaldi antenna seems to be very
suitable for this purpose since it gets over the defects of DRGH Fig. 1. Evolution procedure of the antenna. (a) AVA prototype. (b) AVA with
antennas, and it has the characteristics of wide bandwidth, di- RSE. (c) Lens-loaded AVA with CSE and RSE.
rectional radiation pattern, etc. The tapered slot antenna (TSA)
was first introduced as the exponential form, i.e., exponential higher frequencies. Electromagnetic wave travels along the
tapered slot antenna (ETSA) or Vivaldi antenna [4], [5]. Linear patch edges. The increase of the distance between the two
TSA, constant-width TSA, parabolic TSA, Fermi TSA, and patches results in the weakening of their coupling. A balanced
logarithmic TSA are then investigated [6]–[10]. The dual microstrip line between the feeding microstrip line and the slot
exponential tapered slot antenna (DETSA) originates from flare acts as a wideband impedance transformer. The impedance
the conventional Vivaldi antenna. The comparison between bandwidth of a conventional DETSA is quite wide. However,
a DETSA and other wideband antennas is carried out in [11] the radiation patterns at higher frequencies are not stable,
and [12]. Both the inner and outer edges of the patches, which leading to the reduction of antenna gain [13], [14]. Therefore,
are separated by the substrate, fit exponential curves. The we propose a novel DETSA with loaded lens and planar choke
antenna acts as a resonant antenna at lower frequencies, while slot edges at the termination of the flares to improve its radia-
as a traveling wave antenna excited by slow leaky wave at tion characteristics at higher frequencies [15], [16], resulting in
stable radiation patterns within the whole bandwidth.
Manuscript received December 26, 2012; revised February 27, 2013;
accepted March 14, 2013. Date of publication March 20, 2013; date of current II. ANTENNA GEOMETRY AND DESIGN
version April 04, 2013.
The authors are with the School of Electronics and Information Engineering, The evolution procedure of the antenna is shown in Fig. 1
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China (e-mail: tnge1983@sina. with the prototype of an antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA) in
com; zhangn@hit.edu.cn; qiujh@hit.edu.cn; pyzhang.mw@gmail.com).
Fig. 1(a). The corresponding dimension is 66.4 50 mm . The
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. antenna is fed by a microstrip line with the width of 1.5 mm,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2013.2253592 whose characteristic impedance can be calculated as 50 , equal

1536-1225/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE

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418
Fig. 2. Comparison of reflection coefficient between conventional AVA and
AVA with RSE.
Fig. 3. Geometrical structure of the lens.
TABLE I
FINAL OPTIMAL DIMENSION VALUES (UNIT:MILLIMETERS)
to that of the feeding coaxial cable. The thickness of the sub-
strate equals to 1 mm, while its relative permittivity is 4.5.
The inner and outer edges of the radiation flares fit the fol-
lowing exponential curves:
(1)
indicates the distance between the inner exponential
edge and the central axis in the direction perpendicular to the
central axis, while indicates that between the outer ex-
ponential edge and the central axis. indicates the distance be-
tween the edge and bottom of the antenna in the direction par-
allel to the central axis. equals to 0.291, and equals to
0.084. The optimized results of other parameters are listed in
Table I.
An improved structure of conventional AVA is shown in
Fig. 1(b). Four pairs of symmetric rectangular slot edges are
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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013
Fig. 4. Aperture E-field distribution of different antenna structures at 25 GHz.
(a) Amplitude. (b) Phase.
placed on both fins, i.e., the ripple structure described in [15]
and [16]. The length of each slot is approximated as ,
where refers to the wavelength corresponding to 4 GHz. The
novel structure enlarges the maximal electrical length of the
antenna effectively, contributing to lower operating frequencies
and wider bandwidth. It is verified that the low-end frequency
of the antenna decreases from 4.4 to 4 GHz.
Comparison of simulated reflection coefficient between con-
ventional AVA and AVA with regular slot edges (RSE) is carried
out in Fig. 2. It is clear that the low-end operating frequency de-
creases from 4.4 to 4 GHz on condition that is lower than
10 dB, which indicates that the addition of RSE helps the an-
tenna miniaturized by 9%.
III. STRUCTURE AND DISCUSSION
Radiation patterns of conventional AVA are distorted seri-
ously at higher frequencies due to the traveling current at the
termination of the flares and major phase error at the radiation
aperture, which leads to instable radiation patterns and decrease
of antenna gain. Therefore, a lens is introduced here to decrease
the phase error at the antenna aperture by converting incident
cylindrical wave to plane wave. The lens curve equation can be
calculated as follows [17]:
(2)
(3)
(4)
TENI et al.: NOVEL MINIATURIZED ANTIPODAL VIVALDI ANTENNA WITH IMPROVED RADIATION
Fig. 5. Radiation pattern at 25 GHz. (a) Conventional AVA. (b) Lens-loaded
AVA with RSE. (c) Lens-loaded AVA with CSE and RSE.
Fig. 3 is the geometrical structure of the lens. The two tangent
lines corresponding to the inner exponential edges at the termi-
nation of the flares intersect at the focal point , where the feed
should be located. Fermat’s principle is utilized to equalize the
optical path length from the feed to the aperture plane. The lens
curve can be calculated by (2)–(4), where stands for the re-
fractive index ( refers to the relative permittivity).
To eliminate the influence of traveling current on radiation
patterns at higher frequencies further, choke slot edges (CSE)
are introduced at the termination of the flares [15]. The depth of
the choke slot edges equals to 1.9 mm, which approximates
, and is the wavelength corresponding to 25 GHz.
Relative optimized parameters and dimensions of the antenna
are listed in Table I. The final dimension of the substrate is
66.4 50 mm .
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419
Fig. 6. Gain of different antennas.
Fig. 7. Simulated and measured VSWR of lens-loaded AVA with CSE and
RSE.
Aperture E-field distribution is obtained by simulation and
optimization, as shown in Fig. 4. E-field amplitude and phase
variation along -axis are given in Fig. 4(a) and (b), respec-
tively. It is obvious that phase error on the antenna aperture is
greatly decreased by the addition of lens. The resulting uniform
amplitude and phase distribution contribute to higher aperture
efficiency, lower sidelobe level, and higher gain. Meanwhile,
the addition of choke slot at the end of the radiation flare re-
strains the surface current, which gives rise to the distortion of
radiation patterns at higher frequencies. The improvement leads
to the restrainment of sidelobe level and stable radiation pat-
terns, so the gain is enhanced efficiently. Radiation patterns and
E-field distribution are shown in Fig. 5, showing the improve-
ment of radiation characteristics due to the novel structure.
Gain comparison between different antennas is shown in
Fig. 6. Referring to lens-loaded AVA with RSE within the
frequency range from 10 to 30 GHz, the gain is increased by
at least 1 dB (13 GHz), while the maximal increase can reach
7 dB (23 GHz). The addition of CSE can increase the gain at
higher frequencies by 1–2 dB further.
Simulated and measured voltage standing wave
ratio (VSWR) of lens-loaded AVA with RSE and CSE are
shown in Fig. 7. Great coincidence can be observed within most
of the entire bandwidth. Noticing that the VSWR of this new
antenna structure is close to 2 (higher than 2 at some frequency
points of the measured results), the lens could somehow cause
420 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

IV. CONCLUSION

A novel antipodal Vivaldi antenna is proposed in this letter.

The low-end frequency is extended in the improved structure
with the help of the corrugated edges; radiation characteristics
are improved by the addition of the lens and choke slot at the ter-
mination of the flares, which also contributes to the increase of
the gain. Great performances within the whole frequency range
promote the application of the the antenna in high resolution,
high dynamic-range imaging radars that require high-perfor-
mance low-profile UWB antennas.

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