A Compact, Uniplanar Vivaldi Antenna with an Embedded CPW Feed

A novel designed, compact uniplanar Vivaldi antenna for microwave imaging is proposed in this paper. With its broad bandwidth and end-fire radiation performance, it is especially suitable for microwave imaging systems. In the proposed antenna, a novel feed structure is proposed. A CPW feed is embedded into the Vivaldi patches, which ensures the whole structure to be compact and simple. The Vivaldi patches leads to wide bandwidth, high gain and very good front to back ratio compared to conventional antennas. The bandwidth is about 14.9 GHz (1.2 - 16.1 GHz) in terms of the 10dB return loss. Gain of the antenna is 7.0 dBi, and the front-to-back ratio is 16 dB.