Design Principles of Half Impulse Radiating Antennas

A candidate design for radiating single-ended, high-voltage, fast transient signals is to use a Half Impulse Radiating Antema. This design avoids the mismatch that sometimes occurs in designs that require a balun or geometry conversion. We consider here the design principles involved in this antenna, including the F/D ratio, and whether or not to offset the paraboloidal feed. In addition, we consider dielectric breakdown, and we calculate the field at the point most likely to induce dielectric breakdown: FinaI1y,the radiated far fields are calculated both onand off-boresight.