A Novel Wideband Compact Tapered Slot Antenna for Shallow Icecap Detection Radar Applications

A novel compact Tapered Slot Antenna (TSA), which is used for high resolution polar ice penetrating radar (0.5 GHz-2 GHz), is proposed. This antenna is fed by a CoPlanar Waveguide (CPW) to slot-line transition. The lateral edges of the antenna are corrugated, and lengths of the corrugations gradually decrease from the feeding terminal to the open aperture. Simulated results show that the lowest operating frequency of this novel antenna is lower compared to conventional TSA, and the peak gain is enhanced about 3 dB at low frequencies. Measured bandwidth is larger than 10:1(S11-10 dB), which agrees well with the simulated results except at about 550 MHz (S11-8.2 dB). Furthermore, in the operating band of shallow icecap detection radar, the measured patterns agree well with the simulated results at most frequencies except that the back lobes are higher, and the measured gain is higher than 3.9 dBi.