Design and Experiment of an Ultra-wideband Dual-Pulse Radiating Antenna

A method to widen the microwave spectrum by radiating two pulses of different FWHM is presented. Based on this method, a high-power ultra-wideband dual-pulse radiating antenna is developed. The antenna is made up of a half-impulse radiating antenna (IRA) over a ground plane. The diameter of the reflector is 3 m with focal length 1.2 m and the ground plane is a rectangle of metal with length of 4 m and width of 3 m. Three TEM horns are adopted to feed two pulses into the reflector. The antenna can radiate two different bipolar pulses with peak-to-peak width of 1.7 ns and 3 ns effectively. The 3 ns bipolar pulse is after 1.7 ns bipolar pulse with a delay of 12.5 ns. Simulation analysis and experiments on the antenna are performed. Good agreements between calculated and measured results are obtained. The radiated spectrum of the 1.7 ns pulse covers from 240 MHz to 400 MHz, while the radiated spectrum of the 3 ns pulse covers from 110 MHz to 210 MHz. The radiated spectrum of the combined 1.7 ns and 3 ns dual-pulse with a 12.5 ns delay covers from 100 MHz to 430 MHz. Results show that radiating the combined pulses is a more effective method to widen the microwave spectrum than radiating a single pulse.