Investigation of planar resonant dipole antennas for continuous-wave and ultra-wideband radar modes

This paper presents an investigation into the use of suboptimal planar resonant dipole elements to radiate ultra-wideband pulses in the context of a proposed air-to-air radar mode. By exciting a dipole with a pulse that is shorter than the physical length of the antenna, important properties relating to the radiation mechanism of the antenna are deduced. The results of simulations using the finite-difference time domain method reveal that pulse distortion can be reduced by making small changes to the physical structure of the resonant dipole.