A Fluted E‐Shaped Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna With Rectangular Strips for Surface Scanning Application

ABSTRACT In this paper, a fluted E‐shaped antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA) loaded with rectangular‐shaped strips is proposed for ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) application. The corrugation method is implemented by introducing multiple slots in the uppermost and lowermost arms of the antenna, followed by adding additional 10 strips to broaden and stabilize the impedance bandwidth. The electrical dimension of the antenna is 1.07λ × 1.8λ × 0.004λ. The proposed modified AVA (MAVA) exhibits a high fractional bandwidth of 144.8% over an ultrawideband of 1.6–10 GHz. The peak gain achieved by the antenna is 8.97 dBi. The proposed antenna offers a stable unidirectional radiation pattern along E‐ and H‐plane throughout the spectrum with maximum radiation efficiency of 96%. A prototype of the proposed antenna has been fabricated and tested where the measured results bear close resemblance with the simulated results. The pertinence of proposed antenna for GPR subsurface scanning was examined through a field test where scanned result signifies its aptness for such submissions.