Development of microwave brain stroke imaging system using multiple antipodal vivaldi antennas based on Raspberry Pi technology

This paper proposes a Microwave Imaging System (MIS) for brain stroke detection. In the MIS, the primary challenge is to improve in terms of cost, size, and stroke image quality. Thus, the main contribution of this work is the economy and the compact rotation platform integrated with an array of nine antipodal Vivaldi antenna in circular arrangement and single computer board, Raspberry Pi Module (RPM) as microcontroller developed. The design and fabrication of wideband antenna based on Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software and Rogers RO4350B substrate, which operated from 2.06 GHz to 2.61 GHz. In the RPM, the Python programming language used for regulating the angle of rotation and antenna switching process. The process of receiving reflection signals from the head phantom for each antenna supervised by Single-Pole 8-Throw (SP8T) Radio Frequency (RF) switch. The fabricated head phantom based on the primary tissues of the brain, white matter using inexpensive materials, and located in the middle of the platform. Platform rotation is a combination of wood-based platform with the size 0.36m2 and material Perspex. Then, through an interfacing process between Python script and Vector Network Analyzer (VNA), the raw data in S-Parameters transferred to the MATLAB software for analysis. The fabricated antenna able to realize high directivity, 86.92% efficiency, and 2.45 dBi gain. Overall, the proposed system offers the cost-effective, compact, and able to collect the data effectively around the head phantom that consist of a target clot and without a target clot at 50 different positions. It successfully tracked the presence of stroke clots through color differences in color plots

Wideband Antennas of Passive Seekers for Anti Radiation Missiles

Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD) is a fundamental element of Air Power application by means of in protecting friendly air attackers and destroying the enemy’s ability to defend against air attack. Most of the SEAD operation even today relies on Anti-radiation missile (ARM) which is an air-to-surface tactical missile designed to detect, seek, attack and destroy opponent’s radar. Passive seeker of ARM is a miniaturized ESM receiver which is capable of extracting the necessary angular data from the enemy radar emissions. Single head passive seeker covering wide frequency range from L to Ku band is the preferred choice. Wideband antennas have been designed and utilized for Direction Finding applications of ESM/ELINT receivers for ground, air and ship borne platforms. Unlike these platforms, there are several restrictions for passive seeker based compact ESM receiver for missile borne platform specially air to surface missile where lesser diameter is one of the preferred design parameter. This review paper mainly discusses the existing wideband antennas such as spiral, log-periodic, printed circuit vivaldi and all-metal vivaldi antennas and the comparison of their various parameters for passive seeker. The paper also suggests their suitability with respect to their placement on the missile for three configurations: concealed inside the radome, flush-mounted and conformal antenna based. The paper also brought about the specific test facility required for testing and evaluation of passive seeker to characterize it with missile radome which is the most challenging and time consuming task. Among the three passive seeker configuration discussed, conformal antenna based passive seeker using all-metal Vivaldi is the best option avoiding radome aberration correction which is being utilized in the present third generations of ARM. The second commonly and established passive seeker configuration is concealed inside the radome using spiral antennas where handling radome aberration correction is a limitation.&nbsp

Ultra-wideband antennas

The focus of UWB antenna research activity has matured in recent years and currently mainly concentrates on applications such as biomedicine and security. Early UWB antenna designs were driven by the FCC allocation of spectrum in 2002 and focussed on obtaining wide impedance bandwidths with reasonable group delay characteristics. Many of these were simple planar monopoles antennas with canonical geometries. The emergence of new applications channelled the emphasis towards miniaturisation and integration into devices. This required optimisation of the antenna geometries to ensure that good system performance is achieved from the integrated antenna. Many optimisation techniques are available including the spline technique to generate the outline of the antenna element and ground plane. Simple methods based on genetic algorithms are employed and evolutionary algorithms which are capable of optimising for multiple goals are beneficial when multiple antenna parameters are simultaneously investigated. These techniques have proven advantageous especially when time-domain performance is critical and provide solutions for both single-ended and differential feed arrangements. The main applications using UWB channels in the 3.1 GHz −10.6 GHz spectrum are localization and tracking applications, mainly employing impulse radio UWB imaging, and generally using linear polarization. However circularly-polarized UWB antennas have been developed, both directional and omnidirectional and are being investigated across various systems

Time-Domain Analysis of Modified Vivaldi Antennas

In the ultra-wideband (UWB) application frequency domain parameters such as gain, group delay isn’t sufficient to demonstrate the performance of the antenna. Besides frequency domain analysis, a time-domain analysis is required to characterize the transient behavior of UWB antennas for pulsed operations since pulse distortion of the UWB antenna reduces the system performance and decreases the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the UWB communication system. Vivaldi antenna is a widely used UWB antenna, especially in microwave imaging applications. Performance of Vivaldi antennas is enhanced by adding corrugation on the edge of exponential flaring and/or grating elements on the slot area. From the measured scattering parameters of modified Vivaldi antennas, pulse preserving capabilities are observed. Pulse width extension and fidelity factor parameters are used to define the similarity between the transmitted and received pulse. The analysis is performed with angular dependence with respect to the signal transmitted at the main beam direction

Through Wall Imaging Radar Antenna with a Focus on Opening New Research Avenues

This review paper is an effort to develop insight into the development in antennas for through wall imaging radar application. Review on literature on antennas for use in through wall imaging radar, fulfilling one or more requirements/specifications such as ultrawide bandwidth, stable and high gain, stable unidirectional radiation pattern, wide scanning angle, compactness ensuring portability and facilitating real-time efficient and simple imaging is presented. The review covers variants of Vivaldi, Bow tie, Horn, Spiral, Patch and Magneto-electric dipole antennas demonstrated as suitable antennas for the through wall imaging radar application. With an aim to open new research avenues for making better through wall imaging radar antenna, review on relevant compressive reflector antennas, surface integrated waveguide antennas, plasma antennas, metamaterial antennas and single frequency dynamically configurable meta-surface antennas are incorporated. The review paper brings out possibilities of designing an optimum through wall imaging radar antenna and prospects of future research on the antenna to improve radiation pattern and facilitate overall simple and efficient imaging by the through wall imaging radar

Metamaterial vivaldi antenna array for breast cancer detection

The objective of this work is the design and validation of a directional Vivaldi antenna to detect tumor cells’ electromagnetic waves with a frequency of around 5 GHz. The proposed antenna is 33% smaller than a traditional Vivaldi antenna due to the use of metamaterials in its design. It has an excellent return loss of 25 dB at 5 GHz and adequate radiation characteristics as its gain is 6.2 dB at 5 GHz. The unit cell size of the proposed metamaterial is 0.058λ × 0.054λ at the operation frequency of 5 GHz. The proposed antenna was designed and optimized in CST microwave software, and the measured and simulated results were in good agreement. The experimental study demonstrates that an array composed with the presented antennas can detect the existence of tumors in a liquid breast phantom with positional accuracy through the analysis of the minimum amplitude of Sii.FCT national funds, under the national support to R&D units grant, through the reference project UIDB/04436/2020 and UIDP/04436/202

Size reduction of vivaldi antenna array for microwave imaging

UWB antennas with compact size, stable patterns of end-fire radiation and high gain find many of applications such as radar, microwave imaging, remote sensing. To achieve these goals, a compact-sized end-fire slot antenna (TSA) is a good candidate as it offers broad impedance bandwidth and stable radiation patterns, and high gain characteristics In this project, Vivaldi antenna array is designed, one antenna element is designed using FR-4 substrate which has relative permittivity of 4.3. and thickness of 1.6 mm. Furthermore, the single element is investigated to cover an ultra-wideband from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz by using Computer based Simulation Technology for Microwave studio (CST MWS) reducing the size of antenna will lead to gain reduction as well. Therefore, it is crucial to obtain a compact antenna with an acceptable return loss and radiation pattern. Hence, a single element antenna of size (36×42.