Reconfigurable antenna for footprint adjustment of the GPR system

An Antenna with stable footprint is crucial for GPR system to perform. In regards to the problem of varying soil condition, the design of UWB reconfigurable antenna with footprint adjustment capability was studied as an antenna system for GPR. The antenna system consists of several U-shape micro strip UWB antennas with resistive loading. Reconfiguration of the propose antenna is performed by controlling the switching device which is used to connect each U-shape micro strip UWB antenna. The reconfiguration scheme gives possibility to adjust the antenna footprint by manipulated the effective aperture of the antenna. Larger footprint is generated by increasing the number of U-shape micro strip UWB that are connected to each other and vise versa for smaller footprint. The theoretical analysis has been done to investigate the reconfigurable antenna concept for footprint adjustment and the result shows that the reconfigurable antenna concept is capable to adjust the footprint size of the antenna.