A Substrate-Loaded Gain-Enhanced Vivaldi Antenna Design for the SolidState High-Power Microwave Module
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13052/2026.ACES.J.410406Keywords:
High-power microwave, metasurface lens, realize gain enhancement, Vivaldi antennaAbstract
This paper presents an evolutionary design process, fabrication, and verification of a substrateloaded Vivaldi antenna (VA) design for the pulse-type high-power microwave (HPM) solid-state T/R module. The antenna design utilizes a substrate with high permittivity to improve its power handling capacity (PHC), a snowflake-like metasurface (SFL-MS) lens on the front of the VA to enhance the directivity and impedance characteristics in the middle and high frequency bands, and rectangular slits on the radiating brims of the VA for further broadening its bandwidth and realized gain at low frequencies. After HPM measurement, these functional methods are proven to be effective for jointly contributing to optimizing antenna performances. The proposed prototype shows an operating band of 2.28–6.54 GHz (voltage standing wave ratio [VSWR] < 2) and the PHC values are over 8000 W in this band. The measured realized gain and the maximum gain enhancement can reach 6.56–8.15 dBi and 5.96 dBi. The measured results are reasonable and agree well with simulations.
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