Ultra Wide Band TEM Horn and Reflector Antenna Designs for Down and Forward Looking Ground Penetrating Radars

Abstract

This paper presents ultra-wide band (UWB) TEM horn antennas and TEM horn-fed parabolic reflector designs, which are suitable for down-looking and forward-looking vehicle-mounted impulse GPR systems, respectively. On this scope, partial dielectric loaded, Vivaldi form and array configurations of the TEM horn structure are investigated, designed, simulated and measured. Vivaldi shaped TEM horn-fed parabolic reflector antenna prototype is proposed to reach hyper-wide band impulse radiation performances from 300 MHz up to 15 GHz for multi-band GPR operation that can provide both deep and high resolution imaging. The gain and input reflection performances are demonstrated with measurement results.