Printed UWB End-Fire Vivaldi Antenna with Low RCS

A novel Vivaldi antenna with low radar cross section (RCS) for ultra-wide band (UWB) applications is proposed in this paper. As a printed antenna with electrically large length, the Vivaldi antenna has large backscattering when the incident waves are in the grazing directions. By sleeking the edges of the proposed antenna, the reflected currents are reduced so that the peaks of the backscattering can be inhibited. Its radiation characteristics are simulated and verified. The RCS performance of the proposed antenna is studied and compared with that of a commonly used Vivaldi antenna. The result shows that the proposed antenna has lower RCS than the reference antenna in both the perpendicular and grazing directions while maintaining similar radiation characteristics. So the results illuminate that the proposed Vivaldi antenna is a good candidate in the design of printed UWB end-fire antennas requiring low RCS.