A tapered-permittivity rod antenna for ground penetrating radar applications

A new dielectric rod antenna design modified from its previous version deve loped by Chen [IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. (accepted for publication)] is presented. Such an antenna is useful in detecting small and shallow sub surface objects with excellent depth and spatial resolutions. These feature s make it useful in detecting small anti-personnel (AP) mines, pavement cra cks and the surface layer. Broad bandwidth electromagnetic energy is fed in to the rod from one end, guided along the rod and then radiated from the ot her end where the rod diameter is linearly tapered to a point. The tapered- permittivity design uses an additional permittivity taper to overcome the p roblem of a frequency-dependent pattern when high dielectric material is us ed for size reduction. This new design reduces the internal reflections at the tapered section and results in better efficiency and less antenna clutt er. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.