A low-profile ultra-wideband magneto-electric dipole antenna for ground penetrating radar

Ultra-wideband antennas that operate at low frequencies usually have a large geometry, which makes them very limited in practical engineering application environment where space is often constrained. In this paper, a novel low-frequency low-profile ultra-wideband magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna is designed for the application in ground penetrating radar (GPR) to detect deeply buried targets. The antenna is designed at the operation frequency of 230 MHz, so that the objects that are buried as deep as 1.5 m can be detected. Compared to the traditional low-frequency _antennas, it has a profile as low as 740 mm (Formula presented.) 140 mm (Formula presented.) 150 mm ((Formula presented.)). Based on the simulation analysis and validation measurements, the proposed ME dipole antenna has a wide impedance bandwidth for (Formula presented.) from 135 MHz to 382 MHz even when environmental influence is considered. The antenna is further validated with a GPR experiment, where a pipeline with a diameter of about 200 mm at 1200 mm beneath the road surface is successfully detected by an impulse GPR system where the proposed antennas are integrated.