Parametric study of a water-filled double-ridged horn antenna for biomedical imaging application

The design of a miniaturized double-ridged horn antenna for use as an array element in the Subsurface Radar (SR) system is presented. The array antenna system will be arranged in a cylindrical scanning geometry which will host 72 antennas in a row for illuminating the target and receiving scattered signal. The scanning system will have several rows of antennas for better sensitivity and spatial accuracy. The antenna element of the array has several critical parameters, which influences the antenna performance. Other system parameters are antenna spacing, their angular positions and distances from each other. Based on the parametric studies, two prototypes were fabricated and tested to determine their suitability in the proposed imaging application.