A novel design of a miniature wideband corrugated horn antenna employing unique sinusoidal shaped ridges

A novel design was presented for a miniature corrugated ridged horn antenna. The design was manipulated based upon a special application which had stringent design parameters. In this application two such horn antennas were utilized and antenna isolation and bandwidth were key factors in creating a functional system. It was shown that the horn antenna adhered to all of the design constraints including the paramount isolation (≫60 dB measured) and bandwidth (6.28 GHz to ≫12 GHz) characteristics. This corresponds to 25%–50% more bandwidth than can be realized with a standard scalar horn antenna as seen in [6]. Additionally, simulated data and measured data were in close agreement for all antenna characteristics. As a next step, bandwidth range could be extended even further with the proper insertion of dielectric rods of various radii and dielectric permittivity. These rods would almost completely contain the propagating energy at higher frequencies minimizing the excitation of higher order modes thus increasing the bandwidth of the antenna.

Introduction

Wideband and ultra wideband (UWB) antennas have received a lot of research attention over the past years and for good reason. An ultra wideband system has the distinct advantages of capacity (possibility of achieving high throughput), low power and cost, fading robustness (multi-path immunity), position location capability and flexibility. In addition to all of the advantages it is also very attractive since the FCC legalized UWB for commercial use which encompasses 7.5 GHz of bandwidth. Very high data rates are also possible as 500 Mbps can be achieved at distances of 10 feet under the current laws/regulations [1].