Antenna for Ultrawideband Channel Sounding

A novel compact antenna for ultrawideband channel sounding is presented. The antenna is composed of a symmetrical biconical antenna modified by adding a cylinder and a ring to each cone. A feeding coaxial cable is employed during the simulations in order to evaluate and reduce its impact on the antenna performance. The optimized antenna demonstrates S11 below -10 dB and a stable omnidirectional radiation pattern robust against the cable effect over the frequency band 1.5-41 GHz despite its compactness (the maximum electrical dimension is of 0.29λmax, where λmaxis the free-space wavelength at the lowest frequency of operation). A prototype of the antenna is fabricated and tested. The simulated and measured S11are in a good agreement. Measured radiation patterns confirm the pattern stability in terms of the direction of maximum radiation and 3-dB beamwidth.