Design of a Compact Wideband Dual-Polarization Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna Array

Abstract

A compact wideband dual-polarization antipodal Vivaldi antenna is proposed in this paper. This proposed antenna mainly consists of two orthogonal antipodal Vivaldi antennas and one cross-shaped metal block. Each of the antipodal Vivaldi antennas with three layers of metal is etched on the two layers of substrates with a size of $38\times 42\times 1.5\ \text{mm}^{3}$. Moreover, the cross-shaped metal block with a height of 44 mm is mounted on the corner of the reflection ground plane in each periodic cell, which can fix these antennas enabling of guaranteeing the robustness of this proposed antenna. Obviously, compared to the traditional Vivaldi antenna, this proposed antenna is convenient to replace some elements if necessary. In additional, the simulated impedance bandwidth (active $\text{VSWR} \leq 3)$ for both horizontal polarization antenna and vertical polarization antenna is about 94.5%, ranging 1.2 GHz to 3.35 GHz, while the main beam is scanning from −45° to 45° in azimuth plane and from −30° to 30° in elevation plane. The detailed simulated results and analysis of the proposed conformal antenna array will be presented.