Design and analysis of ultra-wideband antennas for transient field excitations

Abstract. This work addresses the design of two ultra-wideband antennas for the application of transient field measurements that are characterized by frequency spectra that typically range from a few MHz to several GHz. The motivation for their design is the excitation of high power transient pulses, such as double exponential or damped sinusoidal pulses, within highly resonant metallic enclosures. The antenna design is based on two independent numerical full-wave solvers and it is aimed to achieve a low return loss over a wide range of frequencies together with a high pulse fidelity. It turns out that antennas of the conical and discone type do achieve satisfactory broadband characteristics while limitations towards low frequencies persist. Also the concept of fidelity factor turns out as advantageous to determine whether the proposed antennas allow transmitting certain broadband pulse forms.