Design and Experimental Investigation of Tapered Vivaldi Patch Antenna for Microwave Imaging

In the current communication systems the lower microwave band (i.e.) Ultra Wide Band (UWB) is finding wide interest in many applications namely pulse communication, biomedical Microwave imaging verticals for tumor detection etc. The Vivaldi antenna works throughout the whole UWB band, from 3.1 GHz to 10.6GHz with better radiation efficiency among the compact patch antenna variants. The Optimum design of a tapered slot Vivaldi patch antenna can be realized by an antipodal geometry. In this proposed work a tapered Vivaldi patch antenna with antipodal geometry is designed with an intention, to have higher gain values and lower cross polarization in the same band. FR-4 Substrate is used for the antenna design and the results concerning far field pattern, return loss, directivity and gain are compared and analyzed. The VSWR (Voltage Standing Wave Ratio) criteria for this antenna is less than two