Novel ultrawide-bandwidth Vivaldi antenna with low crosspolarisation

The conventional Vivaldi antenna typically has a bandwidth of less than 3:1, limited by the feed line to radiating slot transition. The antipodal Vivaldi antenna removes this limitation but gives very high crosspolarisation which is undesirable for phased array applications. The Letter describes a new balanced antipodal Vivaldi antenna that retains the wide bandwidth characteristics while reducing the crosspolarisation by 15dB across an 18:1 band. Measurements are presented that compare the performance of existing antenna structures with this novel antenna element.