An Absorber-Integrated Taper Slot Antenna

The characteristic of quiet zone is essential for anechoic chambers that have been extensively used in the over-the-air tests. Multireflection in the anechoic chambers of the probe antennas could deteriorate the quiet zone and hence limit the capability of systems to detect small signals, throughput of multiple-input and multiple-output and radio frequency parameter measurement. In this paper, the authors developed an integrated approach of antenna-absorber codesign for a taper slot antenna (TSA) with low radar cross section (RCS). Low RCS antenna minimizes the reflection coefficient of the sampling antennas, the building block of anechoic chamber. This antenna is composed of an open-boundary TSA and shaped expanded polypropylene absorbers that surround the antenna. This new type of hybrid TSA is typically designed for anechoic chamber working from 0.6 to 6 GHz. The measured boresight reflectivity of the hybrid antenna has been achieved at least -27 dB from 0.6 to 6 GHz.