Ultra‐wide band antenna designs and numerical system modelling for forward‐looking GPR

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents ultra‐wide band (UWB) horn feeder and parabolic reflector antenna designs, which are considered highly suitable for forward‐looking vehicle‐mounted ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) systems and time‐domain numerical modelling of impulse GPR signal radiation, wave propagation and target scattering. In this context, the partial dielectric‐loaded Vivaldi shaped TEM horn (PDVA), TEM horn fed double‐ridged horn (PDTEM‐RHA) and their compact versions are investigated, designed simulated and measured. An offset parabolic reflector antenna prototype with a compact PDTEM‐RHA feeder is proposed to reach hyper‐wide band impulse radiation performances from 500 MHz up to 15 GHz for a multi‐band forward‐looking GPR operation that can provide deep subsurface detection with high‐resolution imaging, due to a big advantage of narrowed beam widths. The antenna gain and radiation pattern performances are demonstrated with measurement results.