5. J. Campany, D. Pastor, and B.
Ortega, Fibre optic microwave and detection, UWB radar applications, pulse communication, and
millimetre-wave filter with high density sampling and very high ground penetration radar (GPR) [1,2].
sidelobe suppression using subnanometre optical spectrum slicing, Vivaldi antenna, which was firstly presented by Gibson in
Electron Lett 35 (1999), 494–496. 1979 [3], is a better UWB antenna because of their excellent
6. G. Yu, W. Zhang, and J.A.R Williams, High-performance micro-
radiation performances including broad bandwidth, compact
wave transversal filter using fiber Bragg grating arrays, IEEE Photon
Technol Lett 12 (2000), 1183–1185.
structure, higher gain, and radiation efficiency [4–6]. It is useful
7. X. Yu, X. Zhang, H. Chi, and K. Chen, Photonic microwave trans- in UWB radar applications and UWB communication systems.
versal filter employing a fiber-Bragg-grating-based multiple resona- Due to its better performance Vivaldi antenna has attracted
tor, Microwave Opt Technol Lett 44 (2005), 369–371. many research. Numerous methods were proposed to ameliorate
8. J. Lue, H. Chi, X. Zhang, and L. Shen, Noise reduction using pho- the radiations characteristics of Vivaldi antenna such as adding
tonic microwave filter for radio over fiber system, Microwave Opt slots, using metamaterials, adding dielectric resonator, etc. [7,8].
Technol Lett 48 (2006), 305–307. Modified Vivaldi antenna by adding slots in its extremities is a
9. Y.M. Chang and J.H. Lee, Frequency tunable, single passband, pho- good method which offers a compact and reduced structure with
tonic microwave transversal filter incorporating differential group improved radiation characteristics [9,10].
delay device-based comb filter, Jpn J Appl Phys 48 (2009), 01250-
Recently, regrouping many services in one antenna by using
1–01250-4.
10. H. Gouraud, P. Di Bin, L. Billonnet, B. Jarry, E. Lecroizier, M.
reconfigurable antennas have received many attentions [11,12].
Barge, and J.-L. de Bougrenet, Reconfigurable and tunable However, reconfiguring antenna is the best option which can
microwave-photonics bandpass-swlicing filter using a dynamic gain reduce the interference level at the receiver, because that a fixed
equalizer, Microwave Opt Technol Lett 48 (2006), 562–567. band will be selected at a given time [13,14]. Wideband to nar-
11. K.-H. Lee, W.-Y. Choi, S. Choi, and K. Oh, A novel tunable fiber- rowband reconfiguration is necessary in modern telecommunica-
optic microwave filter using multimode DCF, IEEE Photon Technol tion systems that enclose wideband and multimode applications
Lett 15 (2003), 969–971. [15,16]. Generally, frequency reconfiguration is achieved by
12. IEEE Std 802.11-2012-section 20. using switches, such as micro-electronic mechanical system
13. J.-J. Deslise, What’s the difference between IEEE 802.11 af and (MEMS) switches and PIN diodes, in specific position to drive
802.11 ah? Microwaves RF 54 (2015), 69–72.
the current distribution [13,14,17].
14. S.K. Smith, N. Mysoor, J. Lux, B. Cook, and B. Shah, Frequency-
agile multi-channel x-band coherent receiver/transmitter for the
In this article, a reconfigurable modified Vivaldi antenna with
advanced deep space transponder, IPN Progress Report 42-166, improved radiations characteristics is proposed. UWB modified
August 15, 2006, pp. 1–13. antenna with calculated slots is explained in section 2. Section 3
15. UIT, World Radiocommunications Conference 2015 (WRC-15), presents UWB to narrow bands reconfiguration design and dis-
Agenda and Relevant Resolutions, paragraph 1.9.1, Available at: cusses the simulation results for different states of switching. The
http://www.itu.int/go/wrc-15. conclusion of this article is presented in section 4.
16. NASA’s mission operations and communication services. October 1,
2014. 2. ANTENNA DESIGN
Figure 1 shows the geometry of simple Vivaldi antenna
C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
V designed on a 1.6 mm substrate with a dielectric constant of
4.7. The structure of the Vivaldi antenna is composed by dielec-
RECONFIGURABLE VIVALDI ANTENNA tric substrate, metal ground plane, and feeding microstrip trans-
WITH IMPROVED GAIN FOR UWB mission line. The geometric parameters of the antenna are listed
APPLICATIONS in Table 1. The exponential tapered slot which is on the ground
plane can be expressed as:
Rabiaa Herzi, Hsan Zairi, and Ali Gharsallah
Laboratory of Electronic, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science Y5aeRX 1b (1)
of Tunis, 2092 El Manar, Tunisia; Corresponding author:
[email protected] y2 2y1
a5 rx2 rx1 (2)
e 2e
Received 1 July 2015 y1 erx2 2y2 erx1
b5 rx (3)
e 2 2erx1
ABSTRACT: This article presents a new reconfigurable modified Vivaldi where (x1, y1), (x2, y2) are the peak and bottom point respec-
antenna with improved gain. A simple Vivaldi antenna is modified by add-
tively of the exponential tapered shape and r is the exponential
ing slots in the extremities to demonstrate good radiation characteristics.
factor of the antenna.
The antenna reconfiguration is attended by inserting diodes PIN switches
at specific localizations in the aperture antenna to change its resonance To improve radiation characteristics of the antenna, series of
frequency. A wide bandwidth from 2 to 5 GHz and several narrow bands symmetric slots is loaded in the extremities of the antenna. This
are obtained. This antenna is a good candidate for multi-applications modification is shown in Figure 2. Each slot operates as an
necessitating frequency reconfigurable antenna. V C 2016 Wiley RLC resonator where the resonant wavelength can be estimated
Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:490–494, 2016; View by the following expression:
this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.29592
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
k0 2
Key words: Vivaldi antenna; ultra-waveband; reconfigurable antenna; L5 (4)
4 11er
modified antenna
where Ls is the length of slot and er is dielectric constant of the
1. INTRODUCTION substrate. Five slots with varied lengths are added to achieve a
Ultra-wideband (UWB) has attracted many researches. It has wide bandwidth. The gradually decreased length of the five slots
been utilized in many specific applications including biomedical is listed in Table 2. The width of slot does not affect the return
490 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 2, February 2016 DOI 10.1002/mop
Figure 2 Modified Vivaldi antenna. [Color figure can be viewed in
the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 1 Vivaldi antenna (a) top view and (b) bottom view. [Color TABLE 2 Dimensions of Design Antenna Slot Lengths
figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at
wileyonlinelibrary.com] Calculated Approximated
f0 (GHz) k0 (mm) Slot Lengths (mm) Slot Lengths (mm)
loss of the antenna. By simulation of estimated parameter, the 2.3 130 19.5 20.5
width of all slots is chosen to be 2 mm. 2.5 120 18 18.5
As a result, Figure 3 presents the return loss of both anten- 3.8 96.7 14.5 15.9
nas. It can be seen that the modified Vivaldi antenna demon- 4 75 11.2 12.5
4.2 71.4 10.70 11.5
strates the best wideband performance with a return loss less
than 210 dB over the 2.2–4.3 GHz band. In addition, it is indi-
cated that adding slots has produced the union of the dual band presents the return loss of this configuration. It can be seen that
of the simple antenna to obtain a wide bandwidth. Figure 4 the return loss of Vivaldi antenna blocked with metal is superior
shows the radiation patterns of both antennas with and without to 24.5 dB over the operating frequency band. Then the reflec-
slots at 3.5 GHz. It is observed that adding slots can signifi- tion coefficient of the antenna is damaged. Figures 8(a) and 8(b)
cantly enhance gain by about 2 dB. Not to mention that the side present successively the surface current distribution before and
lobe level is decreased. Therefore, the modified antenna with after insertion of the metal. It is observed that the current is
optimized slots can achieve compact structure with improved extremely reduced along the edges upper to the metal loaded. It
radiation patterns and better impedance bandwidth. is indicated that the metal, which operates as a bridge, can block
the current distribution and inhibit the electromagnetic wave to
3. WIDEBAND TO NARROWBAND AGILE ANTENNA DESIGN radiate. Secondly, to reconfigure the Vivaldi antenna, the bridge
The tapered slot line of the Vivaldi antenna is composed by will be replaced by switches to perturb the width of the aperture
three portions. The first portion (a) is the circular slot used to of the antenna. In addition, the position of the switches is an
achieve the impedance matching of the transmission line, the important parameter which can affect the current distribution in
second portion (b), which is a rectangular slot, is utilized to cou- the aperture antenna. Then varying the positions of switches can
ple the electromagnetic wave from transmission line, finally the achieve different resonance frequencies. Switching band is con-
third part, which is an exponential tapered slot, can be also trolled by using PIN diodes. The ON state of the PIN diode was
divided into two regions which is named the propagation (c) modeled as a 100 Ohm resistance, and as a 22 pF capacitance
and the radiation parts (d). The propagation part is used to guide in the OFF state. Vivaldi antenna with PIN diodes is presented
the electromagnetic wave to radiate and the radiation part, in Figure 9, where Y is the switching level. If the last one is
which takes place when the slot width is about the half of the increased, the width of the switched slot is increased. Then the
wavelength matching to the higher frequencies, is the region number of the used switches is increased. Connection of the
when the signal commences to radiate. The slot width is pro- diodes is realized by inserting fine metals between these
gressively increased which makes each part of the antenna radi- switches. Moreover, variation of the switching level can achieve
ate at different frequencies. Wideband to narrow bands
reconfiguration can be achieved by perturbing the width of the
radiation part of the tapered slot. The parameters of the tapered
slot line of the Vivaldi antenna can be described by Figure 5.
The great idea to reconfigure the Vivaldi antenna is to use
PIN diodes at the beginning of the radiation part. Firstly, to
demonstrate this idea, the beginning of the radiation area was
closed by metal. This structure is shown in Figure 6. Figure 7
TABLE 1 Dimensions of Design Antenna
L (mm) W (mm) W1 (mm) r (mm)
Figure 3 Reflection coefficients of the simple antenna and the modi-
90 120 15 25
fied antenna
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 2, February 2016 491
Figure 7 Reflection coefficients of the Vivaldi antenna with and with-
out blocking metal
Figure 4 Radiation patterns at 3.5 GHz of the AVA (a) with and (b)
diode is three: two diodes (S1 and S2) used to switch the wide
without slots. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
available at wileyonlinelibrary.com] region and one diode (S3) used to switch the small region. In
the second case (Y 5 28 mm), the width of the slot is 9 mm
which require fives switches, (S1, S2, S3) switch the large part
and (S4, S5) switch the small part.
The frequency reconfigurability is achieved by dividing the
width of the tapered slot into two unequal parts and switching
these parts in different state. For each case, setting all switches
in the ON state generates the same radiation characteristics of
the antenna without switching. On the other side, setting all
switches in the OFF state offer the same results of the antenna
with bridge. Then, two possibilities of switching are obtained
which are listed in Table 3.
Figure 5 Different regions of the tapered slot line of the Vivaldi
antenna. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is avail-
able at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
different resonances frequencies. In this context, two cases are
studied in order to analyze the effect of the switching level by
moving it up toward the larger slot. In the first case
(Y 5 24.6 mm), the switching level is approximately in the
beginning of the radiation part, where the width of the tapered
slot is about 6 mm. The minimum number required of the PIN
Figure 6 Modified Vivaldi antenna with metal blocker. [Color figure Figure 8 Surface current distributions of (a) the modified antenna and
can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlineli- (b) the blocked antenna at 3.5 GHz. [Color figure can be viewed in the
brary.com] online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
492 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 2, February 2016 DOI 10.1002/mop
Figure 11 Reflection coefficients of reconfigurable antenna for switch-
ing Case 2
observed that where the switching level is increased which offer a
larger switched slot, the different narrow bands are broadened and
Figure 9 Reconfigurable Vivaldi antenna with PIN diodes. [Color fig- the resonance frequencies is decreased. As indicated in the last
ure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonline- case, the number of the switched band can be increased by increas-
library.com]
ing the width of the slot. Table 3 compares the radiations charac-
teristics for different cases.
TABLE 3 Radiation Characteristics of Both Antennas Figures 12 and 13 show the radiation patterns for each
switching cases. It is observed that increasing switching level,
Resonance which offers wider bands, results in radiation patterns with
Smaller Frequency Band-Width
improved gain and narrower beamwidth at different frequencies.
Case Larger Part Part (GHz) (GHz) Gain (dB)
Then, for the same frequencies gain in the narrow bands is infe-
Case1 (S1,S2,S3) (S4, S5) 2.4 0.7 5.61 rior in the wide band because of the change in current distribu-
ON OFF 4.3 0.78 7.43 tion. Narrowband obtained by decreasing the width of aperture
(S1,S2,S3) (S4, S5) 5.1 0.52 7.98 reduces the current distribution. For example, it is indicated that
OFF ON
the gain in Case 3 is higher than in the Case 1 and Case 2 at
Case 2 (S1,S2,S3, S4) (S5,S6,S7) 2.3 0.75 5.85
the same frequency 5.2 GHz and 4.2 GHz. Also, it can be seen
ON OFF 4.2 0.54 7.76
(S1,S2,S3, S4) (S5,S6,S7) 2.7 0.88 5.4
OFF ON 5.17 0.89 8.78
Figure 10 shows the return loss of both switching states for the
first case. However, three narrow bands are obtained at 2.4 GHz,
4.3 GHz, and 5.2 GHz. When the PIN diodes of the wide part are
in the ON state and the PIN diode of the narrow part is in the OFF
state, two narrow bands are observed at 2.4 GHz and at 4.3 GHz.
Once in the opposite case one narrow band at 5.2 GHz is attended.
In the second state, the returns losses of both possibilities of
switching are presented in Figure 11, where four narrow bands are
obtained at 2.3 GHz and 2.7 GHz at the first state and at 4.2 GHz
and 5.2 GHz at the second state. It can be seen that the frequency
reconfigurability is attended in both the cases. In addition, it is
Figure 12 Radiation pattern of reconfigurable antenna for the switching
Case 1 (a) at 2.4 GHz, (b) at 4.2 GHz, and (c) at 5.2 GHz. [Color figure
Figure 10 Reflection coefficients of reconfigurable antenna for switch- can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.
ing Case 1 com]
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 2, February 2016 493
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