A miniaturized antipodal vivaldi antenna for microwave imaging
A miniaturized antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA) with bandwidth of 1–5GHz is proposed in this letter. The miniaturization of this end-fire directional antenna was realized by employing elliptically shaped conductors with two pairs of elliptically opened slots on them and one pair of symmetrically loaded structures. Additional reflection structures was designed to ensure the antenna's directivity at low frequency part within the bandwidth. The antenna was fabricated and measured through experiment, agreeing well with that of computer CST® simulations. The designed antenna can be applied to medical microwave imaging system.