Wide bandwidth arrays of Vivaldi antennas

Abstract

Several examples of wide bandwidth Vivaldi antenna are presented to illustrate bandwidths up to 10:1. Modern computational methods can be used by experienced designers to achieve this performance. Traditional Vivaldi antenna arrays cannot be easily fabricated as modular structures because they require electrical contact between adjacent elements. The Balanced Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna is modular, but currently is limited to approximately 4:1 bandwidth in scanning arrays. Initial studies of several wide bandwidth arrays indicate that they produce little dispersion of short-pulse signals within their operating bandwidth. Truncation effects in finite arrays operating over wide bandwidth remain to be understood and characterized. For these studies, new computational methods like finite-element domain decomposition are required.