Quad ridged UWB TEM horn antenna for GPR applications

A compact quad-ridged horn antenna (QRH) for the deep ground penetrating radar water detection applications is designed operate in frequency range of 50MHz to 500MHz. Within this contribution the design and simulation of such an antenna is considered for water level detection in Egyptian dessert aquifers. Among the varying horn design parameters, the linear and exponentially tapered walls are studied as well as variations of the curvature of the dielectric waveguide between the two ridges enhancing the matching conditions hence, reducing size and increasing the antenna operational bandwidth. The design goal is to achieve broad bandwidth antenna with maintaining compact dimensions. Two modifications have been introduced on the conventional triangular TEM horn antenna. First multifunction tapering of the horn plates with curvature ending, second inserting perturbing two different ridges between the aperture planes and filling the space between the ridges with high dielectric constant material, in order to lower the operating frequency without increasing the size of the original setup. Replacing the two ridges with four ones, each pair is perpendicular to the other, reduces more the antenna size and improves more its matching. The antenna dimensions are 145 × 102 × 124 cm³ that resembles improvement in size as compared with similar commercial GPR horn antennas as Satimo Horn model SH 68 with dimensions 2983×1615×2505 cm³.