A dielectric material loaded TEM horn antenna

The TEM horn antenna is a well-known type of ultra-wideband antenna. Unlike most TEM horns developed, the antenna discussed in this paper is loaded with a dielectric material and the intention is to make the antenna smaller while maintaining a good performance over an extremely wide band. Various issues linked to the optimal design (including balun) are considered FDTD method is employed to predict its performance. The antenna is built and tested. The measurement results shown that the VSWR is smaller than 2 over the frequency range of 500 MHz to 14 GHz, which is better than expected.