A customized reduced size Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna used in Wireless Baseband Transmission for short-range communication

An Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna (AVA) with a reduced size of 37 mm × 21 mm has been designed, simulated and fabricated on 1.6 mm-thick FR4 substrate for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications. It is customized with a slot resonator located on the ground plane only and with a shift of the ground plane input. AVA simulations and measurements are presented and are in good agreement. The antenna exhibits a voltage standing wave ratio of less than 2, and a peak gain in the −0.5 to 4.5 dB range through the 3.6-12 GHz frequency range. The antennas were arranged in an emitter-receiver aligned configuration with a distance R = 1 cm, in order to send and receive digital data directly at 1 Gbps with 20-bits input data, based on the Wireless Baseband Transmission (WBT) scheme with Manchester and Polar RZ encodings. Measurements show the recovery of the input digital signals after processing of transmitted output signal and are encouraging to use broadband AVA with a linear phase characteristic as a possible candidate for use in short range communication in cryogenic environment.