On the use of spiral antennas in ultra-wideband communication links

Abstract

This paper discusses the pulse distortion of two-arm spiral antennas in ultra-wideband (UWB) communication links and mitigation thereof by modifying the antenna so that phase and amplitude distortions are accounted for by the aperture itself. A new spiral topology, named power-spiral, is introduced to reduce the effect of the phase distortions. When combined with classical Archimedean spiral, this antenna has simultaneously high-quality time and frequency domain performance. To compensate the amplitude distortion resulting from frequency-dependent path loss of a UWB communication channel, lens-loaded spiral and spiral array are investigated. Obtained results clearly show the time-domain performance improvement with all studied approaches.