Improved Feed Design for Enhance Performance of Reflector Based Impulse Radiating Antennas

Conventional reflector based Impulse Radiating Antennas (IRA’s) are designed with conical taper transmission line feed. A novel feed design approach is used to enhance gain of the IRA without increasing diameter of the reflector. This paper discus conventional and new IRA designs of different input impedances. IRA with conventional feed and with new dipole feed is designed for both 200 Ω and 100 Ω input impedance category. The IRA with new feed design offers better gain compared to conventional IRA for both 200 Ω and 100 Ω input impedance category. These antenna designs are analyzed using the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method and the result obtained shows that IRAs with new dipole feed offers better gain than IRAs with conventional feed for respective input impedance category without any compromise in time domain characteristics. A half IRA with new feed with input impedance of nearly 50 Ω was realized and measured to establish the advantage of new dipole feed IRA.