A UWB Dipole Antenna With Enhanced Impedance and Gain Performance

A planar dipole antenna is proposed with enhanced impedance and gain performance across an ultrawideband (UWB) operating bandwidth of 3.1-10.6 GHz. The proposed antenna consists of two semi-elliptical-ended arms connected by a shorting bridge. With the shorting bridge, the length of the antenna is reduced and the radiation performance in terms of gain is improved especially at higher frequencies. The performance of the proposed antenna is validated experimentally using a wideband balun to realize the microstrip-co-planar strip transition. The results show that the proposed antenna can achieve a gain of 2.4-6.2 dBi across a VSWR=2 impedance bandwidth of 118% (2.8-10.9 GHz). The time domain responses of pulsed UWB signals through conventional and proposed antennas are compared. Furthermore, a parametric study is performed to provide antenna engineers with the information about the design.