Design of a Balun for a Bow Tie Antenna in Reconfigurable Ground Penetrating Radar Systems

This paper deals with the design of a reconfigurable antenna that resembles a monolithic UWB bow-tie antenna for Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) applications. In particular, the attention is focussed on the design of the balun system able to work in the frequency band 0.3–1 GHz; the effectiveness of the design is shown by examining the behaviour of the scattering parameters S11 for both the reference monolithic antenna and the designed reconfigurable antenna. Also, an analysis of the radiation pattern of both the monolithic and reconfigurable antennas is presented and confirms the effectiveness of the designed balun system. Received 4 October 2010, Accepted 30 November 2010, Scheduled 9 December 2010 Corresponding author: Raffaele Persico ([email protected]). 124 Persico, Romano, and Soldovieri