PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2008 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ULTRA-WIDEBAND (ICUWB2008), VOL.
Characteristics of a Corrugated Tapered Slot
Antenna with Dielectric Rod and Metallic Reflector
Alexander Hees1 , Jürgen Hasch1 and Jürgen Detlefsen2
1
Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany. Email: {Alexander.Hees, Juergen.Hasch}@de.bosch.com
2
Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. Email: detlefsen@tum.de
Abstract—A novel ultrawideband (UWB) tapered slot antenna
with high directivity is presented. It operates in the frequency
range from 2.2 GHz up to 8.5 GHz. The antenna consists of
three parts. As feed, a tapered slot on a PCB is used. Additional
corrugations at the lateral metallic borders of the tapered
structure lead to reduced side lobe levels and a flat gain in the
main direction. The PCB is inserted into a cylindrical dielectric
rod to increase the directivity. Finally a metallic reflector is added
at the back of the antenna structure to reduce the backward
radiation. With this design, a mean gain of 9 dBi and a stable
main beam direction with a nearly constant 3 dB beam width,
both in the E- and H-plane, were achieved. The antenna shows
excellent time domain behavior with a high and sharp peak as
well as low ringing of the impulse response.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Ultrawideband antenna designs, published in scientific lit-
erature over the past few years, were mainly developed for
communication applications [1]. These exhibit an isotropic ra-
diation pattern and often an excellent input matching. However
sensor applications often require a high directivity. It is a quite
challenging task to achieve frequency independent radiation
characteristics, high directivity, a small size, good broadband
input matching and high efficiency if UWB antennas are to
be designed [2]. That is the reason why the number of such
antennas published in literature is rather small.
We present a tapered slot antenna which is inserted into a
circular dielectric rod. At the back of the antenna structure,
a metallic reflector is placed. To reduce the surface current
flow on the lateral metallic borders of the tapered structure,
corrugations have been inserted there. Thus high directivity,
a stable main beam direction and a good broadband input
matching are obtained with small antenna dimensions.
The subsequent sections of this paper are organized as
follows: First, the design of the antenna is discussed. In sec-
tion III simulation and measurement results in the frequency
domain are presented. A measurement method for evaluating
the transient response of the antenna with a vector network
analyzer is shown in section IV. The paper concludes with a
summary of the presented results.
II. UWB A NTENNA D ESIGN
Tapered slot antennas are a special kind of an endfire
travelling wave antenna and are well known for their broad-
band behavior. In our design, the tapered structure is printed
on the top side of a two layer PCB made of Isola IS410
978-1-4244-1827-5/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE
with a thickness of 900 μm. On the bottom side, the feeding
network is realized. We have chosen a wideband microstrip to
slotline transition [3] for feeding the elliptically shaped tapered
structure. Behind the tapered structure, the metallic reflector
is placed and soldered on it. At the reflector a SMA jack is
mounted to connect the antenna feed. The PCB is inserted
into the dielectric rod. Two plastic bolts and spacers fix the
rod at the reflector. The constructed antenna is depicted in
figure 1(a).
(a) Photo of the antenna (b) PCB
Fig. 1. Tapered slot antenna with dielectric rod and metallic reflector
The detached fields of this structure are guided into the
circular dielectric rod. Since the rod has a higher permittivity
compared to air, it acts as a waveguide and increases the
directivity. The angular dependent field configuration caused
by the tapered structure, excites the fundamental hybrid mode
HE11 , the so-called dipole mode, on the rod. An advantage
of this HE11 mode, compared to TE, TM or other types of
hybrid modes, is that it has no cutoff frequency and is thus
more suitable for broadband use [4]. To ensure a smooth
transition from guided to free space waves, the top of the
rod is shaped conically. In order to avoid the generation of
high-order modes, a material with low dielectric permittivity
should be used and therefore Ultem with r ≈ 3.0 was chosen.
The metallic reflector reduces the backward radiation of the
antenna.
Surface currents on the lateral metallic borders of the
tapered structure on the PCB cause increased side lobe levels
and a lower gain in the main direction. Our approach to
minimize the current flow on these borders is to introduce
corrugations with a depth of about λ/4 at the center frequency.
Thereby, the current at the edges of the PCB is reduced.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2008 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ULTRA-WIDEBAND (ICUWB2008), VOL. 1

(a) Simulation E-plane (b) Measurement E-plane

(c) Simulation H-plane (d) Measurement H-plane

Fig. 2. Realized gain in the E- and H-plane

III. S IMULATION AND M EASUREMENT R ESULTS IN THE and the losses of the used PCB substrate.
F REQUENCY D OMAIN In ultrawideband antenna characterization, it is often con-
The frequency range of interest is between 2.2 GHz and venient to calculate a mean gain over the frequency band of
8.5 GHz. Because of its high bandwidth, the antenna was operation instead of evaluating the gain at each frequency
simulated and optimized with the transient solver of CST point in the band. Using equation 1, the measured mean gain
Microwave Studio. Figure 1(b) shows the PCB of the tapered g = 10 · log(G) of the tapered slot antenna in the frequency
slot antenna. The PCB of the antenna has a size of 97.1 mm x range from 2.2 GHz to 8.5 GHz is about 9.0 dBi.
93 mm, the metallic reflector 67.1 mm x 60 mm and the rod ω2
1
is 95 mm long and has a diameter of 50 mm. G= G(ω) dω (1)
ω2 − ω1
In our anechoic chamber, the farfield radiation charac- ω1
teristics of the tapered slot antenna were measured. Here, Figure 4 shows the simulated and measured reflection
the antenna was separated from the reference antenna by a coefficient of the antenna. From 2.6 GHz up to 8.5 GHz,
distance of 3 m. Figure 2 compares the realized gain between the reflection coefficient, measured with an HP8510C network
simulation and measurement, both in the E- and H-plane. The analyzer, is better than -5.9 dB. Small variations between
losses of the matching network are included in the results. A simulation and measurement can be seen in the range of
quite good agreement between simulation and measurement 3 GHz.
can be observed. The main beam direction is stable with only
IV. M EASUREMENT METHOD FOR EVALUATING THE
marginal variations in the whole frequency band of operation.
TRANSIENT RESPONSE
At 5.5 GHz, the front-to-back ratio is better than 13.7 dB.
The measured 3 dB beam width in the E-plane at 2.5 GHz is The behavior of an antenna in time domain can be described
about 60◦ and decreases with higher frequencies down to 34◦ by the normalized impulse response [5] [6]. It shows how
at 5.5 GHz and 33◦ at 8.5 GHz. exactly a signal is transferred by the antenna, e.g. under
A comparison of the simulated and measured gain in main different angles. Thus it is an additional important parameter
beam direction is depicted in figure 3. At 2.5 GHz, the in radar and communication systems. The normalized electric
measured gain is about 5 dBi and moves up to 10.9 dBi at field in time domain at a distance r from the transmit antenna
5.9 GHz. At higher frequencies, there is a slight difference is given as
between simulation and measurement where a gain of 7.2 dBi
at 8.5 GHz is reached. From our observations, the reason for eT x (t) 1 1 dhn,T x (t) u+ (t)
√ = ∗ T x ∗ δ(t − r/c0 ) (2)
these differences is the frequency dependent dielectric constant ZF 0 r 2πc0 dt ZL,T x

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2008 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ULTRA-WIDEBAND (ICUWB2008), VOL. 1

12 0

10 −10
Gain [dBi]

|S11| [dB]
8 −20

6 −30

4 Simulation −40 Simulation

Measurement Measurement
2 −50
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 4 6 8
f [GHz] f [GHz]

Fig. 3. Comparison of gain in main beam direction Fig. 4. Simulated and measured input reflection coefficient

and the output voltage u−

Rx (t) of a receiver antenna is
defined to 2πrc0 S 21 (ω, ϑAU T , φAU T ) jωr/c0
H n (ω, ϑAU T , φAU T ) = e
jω H n,mbd (ω)
u− (t) e (t) (7)
Rx = hn,Rx (t) ∗ √Rx (3)
ZL,Rx ZF 0 S 21 (ω) is measured with a network analyzer at positive
discrete frequencies only. Due to the fact that H n (ω) is an
In equation (2) and (3), u+T x (t) is the incident voltage
analytic signal, the normalized impulse response hn (t) and its
wave at the feeding point of the transmit antenna. hn,T x (t) envelope |h+ n (t)| can be expressed as
and hn,Rx (t) present the normalized impulse response of the
antennas, ZL,T x and ZL,Rx the feed line impedance, ZF 0 the  
h+
n (t, ϑAU T , φAU T ) = 2 · F
−1
H n (ω, ϑAU T , φAU T ) (8)
wave impedance of free space and c0 the velocity in vacuum.
Combining both equations with the assumption of identical
 
feed line impedances ZL,T x = ZL,Rx leads to hn (t, ϑAU T , φAU T ) =  h+
n (t, ϑAU T , φAU T ) (9)
The phase in equation 6 must be unwrapped before the
1 dhn,T x (t) inverse fourier transform F −1 is applied. Otherwise artefacts
u−
Rx (t) = ∗ hn,Rx (t) ∗ u+
T x (t) ∗ δ(t − r/c0 )
2πrc0 dt in the time domain may occure. In our measurement setup,
(4) two identical tapered slot antennas were used which are co-
If the feed line impedances are also equal to the generator polarized and separated by a distance of r=3.0 m. An HP8510C
impedance ZG driving the transmit antenna and the load vector network analyzer performs the measurement of S 21 (ω)
impedance ZL at the receive antenna, the normalized impulse in the band of 1-10 GHz with 201 frequency points. In
response can be derived by measuring the transmission coef- order to get the correct amplitude and phase information, the
ficient S 21 with a network analyzer. measurement setup must be calibrated correctly. For a proper
calibration, measurement cables which exhibit high amplitude
and phase stability in the whole frequency range should be
U−
Rx (ω)
S 21 (ω, ϑT x , φT x , ϑRx , φRx ) = used. At larger distances r of the two antennas, a broadband
U+
T x (ω) power amplifier at port 1 of the VNA increases the signal
1 to noise ratio on the receiver side. However, the PA should
= jωH n,T x (ω, ϑT x , φT x )
2πrc0 have an excellent output matching since the measured S 21 (ω)
· H n,Rx (ω, ϑRx , φRx )e−jωr/c0 is affected by the antenna input impedance S 11,AU T (ω) and
(5) the output impedance of the PA S 22,P A (ω). Additionally, the
port power of the VNA is set to a fix value which leads to a
The angular dependence of the transmit and receiver antenna constant and equal gain of the amplifier during the calibration
is included in equation 5. In a practical measurement setup, and measurement. The calibration is done by a simple through
the Antenna Under Test (AUT) is placed on a rotary disk measurement including the cables, adaptors and the power
and the reference antenna is fix and orientated in the main amplifier, but without the AUT and the reference antenna.
beam direction to it. Assuming two identical antennas with Figure 5 shows a measurement of the normalized impulse
hn (t) = hn,T x (t) = hn,Rx (t), equation (6) represents the response in main beam direction. The transient signal hn (t)
transient response in the frequency domain in main beam is normalized to its maximum value |hn,max (t)|. The main
direction and equation (7) the angular dependence of H n (ω). peak of the impulse is very sharp with a peak magnitude of
 0.683 m/ns.
2πrc0 From figure 6 and 7, it can be observed that the phase
H n,mbd (ω) = S (ω)ejωr/c0 (6) center is constant over φ and ϑ in the range of about ±30◦ .
jω 21

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2008 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ULTRA-WIDEBAND (ICUWB2008), VOL. 1

1 τF W HM,1−10 GHz =171 ps and the ringing was determined to

0.8 Measurement @ ϑ=90°, φ=0°
0.6 τr,0.1,1−10 GHz =446 ps.
(t)| 0.4
n,max
0.2 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
0 The authors would like to thank Jochen Schwer, Ewald
h (t) / |h

−0.2
−0.4
Schmidt and Hans Wachter for the mechanical construction
n

−0.6 and fabrication of the antenna prototypes.

−0.8
−1 R EFERENCES
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
t [ns] [1] H. Schantz, The art and science of ultrawideband antennas. Boston,
Mass.: Artech House, 2005.
Fig. 5. Measured normalized impulse response in main beam direction [2] R. F. Harrington, “Effect of antenna size on gain, bandwidth and effi-
ciency,” J. Res. Nat. Bureau Standards, vol. 64D, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 1960.
[3] N. Marchand, “Transmission-line conversion transformers,” Electronics,
vol. 17, pp. 142–145, 1944.
[4] C. A. Balanis, Advanced engineering electromagnetics. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1989.
[5] E. G. Farr and C. E. Baum, “Time domain characterization of antennas
with tem feeds,” Sensor and Simulation Notes, Air Force Research
Laboratory, Directed Energy Directorate, Kirtland, New Mexico, no. Note
426, pp. 1–16, October 1998.
[6] W. Sörgel and W. Wiesbeck, “Influence of the antennas on the ultra-
wideband transmission,” EURASIP J. Appl. Signal Process., vol. 2005,
no. 1, pp. 296–305, 2005.

Fig. 6. Envelope of the measured normalized impulse response in the E-plane

Fig. 7. Envelope of the measured normalized impulse response in the H-plane

The measured time of the full width at half maximum,

derived from the envelope of the normalized impulse response,
was determined to τF W HM,1−10 GHz =171 ps, the ringing was
calculated to τr,0.1,1−10 GHz =446 ps.
V. C ONCLUSION
An ultrawideband tapered slot antenna has been successfully
developed in the frequency range from 2.2 GHz to 8.5 GHz.
The PCB with the tapered structure was inserted into a
dielectric rod and a reflector was placed behind it to achieve
a high directivity. The antenna exhibits a stable main beam
direction over the band of operation and a measured mean
gain of 9.0 dBi. At 5.5 GHz, a 3 dB opening angle of 34◦
and a front-to-back ratio better than 13.7 dB were realized.
In the main lobe the measured transient response exhibits a
high and sharp peak with a magnitude of 0.683 m/ns. The
time of the full width at half maximum was calculated to