High-gain antipodal vivaldi antenna surrounded by dielectric for wideband applications

In this communication, an antipodal Vivaldi antenna surrounded by dielectric (AVA-SD) is proposed for wideband applications such as microwave and millimeter-wave imaging, see-through walls, and radio astronomy. The main features of the proposed AVA-SD are wideband high gain, high front-to-back ratio, corrected E-plane tilt of beam at wide bandwidth, narrow half power beam width, and low side lobe and cross-polarization levels. A prototype of the proposed AVA-SD is fabricated and its performance is simulated and measured demonstrating operating frequency bandwidth from 5-50 GHz. The designed AVA-SD has overall size of 31.6 × 110 mm2