A Fern Fractal Leaf Inspired Wideband Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna for Microwave Imaging System

This communication presents a new approach to implement planar antipodal Vivaldi antenna design. A nature fern inspired fractal leaf structure is implemented here. Impedance bandwidth (-10 dB) of the proposed antenna is around 19.7 GHz starting from 1.3 to 20 GHz. The lower operating frequency of this antenna is reduced by 19% with the second iteration as compared to the first iteration of fractal leaf structure. The prototype antenna is fabricated and tested in frequency as well as in time domains to obtain various transfer characteristics along with common antenna parameters. Experimental results show that good wideband feature, stable radiation pattern, and promising group delay of less than 1 ns signatures are obtained, which agree well with the simulated data. The miniaturized proposed antenna structure becomes an attractive choice in microwave imaging applications because of its ultrawide fractional bandwidth at 175%, high directive gain of 10 dBi, and finally appreciably large fidelity factor above (>90%).