A Leaf-shaped Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna for Robust Wireless Communications in Industrial IoT Applications

This study proposed a leaf-shaped antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA) that operates in the 10 GHz to 35 GHz frequency band and was designed specifically for reliable wireless communication in industrial Internet of things applications. Using a Teflon substrate (ε<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">r</inf> = 2.1, tanδ = 0.0002), the antenna was built and powered by a 50 Ω microstrip feedline. A leaf structure with two bending branches was integrated into the design, greatly improving the antenna's performance. Three distinct design techniques were employed to evaluate performance: a large leaf structure, a large width of bending, and a smaller leaf structure. The proposed antenna with its medium leaf structure and optimized bending width demonstrated superior performance, achieving a peak gain of 12.2 dB at 30 GHz and a radiation efficiency of 97.8% at 16.25 GHz.