THERMAL NOISE ANALYSIS ON THE RESISTIVE VEE DIPOLE ANTENNA FOR GROUND-PENETRATING RADAR APPLICATIONS Kangwook Kim Gwangju

Institute of Science and Technology School of Information and Mechatronics Gwangju 500-712 South Korea

Abstract
Thermal noise characteristics of the resistive vee dipole (RVD) antenna are analyzed for ground-penetrating radar (GPR) applications. The resistive vee dipole (RVD) is a vee antenna, whose arms are loaded resistively according to a loading prole. In many applications, the Wu-King prole is selected for the loading prole because it suppresses the internal reection of the current. Thus, when a pulse is applied in the feed line, the RVD with the Wu-King prole produces essentially no ripples in the feed line after the initial reection at the drive point. The RVD can also send and receive short pulses in a direction and has a low radar cross section, which can minimize multiple reections between the antenna and nearby objects. In addition, the RVD can easily be applied in array applications. These features of the RVD make it suitable for many GPR applications. Recently, researchers try to apply the RVD in longer range applications, such as airborne GPR and ultra-wideband foliage penetration radar. In order for the RVD to be used in such applications, the RVD in the transmitter mode needs to radiate high power and the signal captured by the RVD in the receiver mode needs to be amplied. However, the resistive loading on the antenna limits both. For RVDs with chip resistor loading, the amount of power that can be accepted by the antenna from the feed line is limited by the power handling capability of the chip resistors. When the RVD is in the receiver mode, the received signal may be amplied to a useful level if the signal power is stronger than the noise power. Thus, in order to determine the maximum range of operation of the RVD as a radar antenna, the amount of noise power in the received signal needs to be known. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the noise behavior of the RVD. In this paper, we only consider the thermal noise from the resistive loading, which is inherent in the antenna and cannot be avoided. The RVD analyzed in this paper has curved arms and is loaded with modied Wu-King prole. The loading prole is approximated with 14 chip resistors. A numerical model based on a commercial method of moments software is used for the investigation. In the numerical model, equivalent noise sources, which generate the same amount of power as the noise power of the resistor, are placed at the chip resistor locations. A resistor is placed at the antenna drive point and simulates the feed line impedance. The power absorbed by the resistor at the antenna drive point is measured for further analysis. The results include the antenna noise temperature, noise power spectrum, antenna efciency, and the contribution of individual resistors to the total noise power. The results show that the antenna has low radiation efciency and high noise temperature. The resistor that is located closest to the drive point generates the most noise power. The results may be used to determine the operation range of the antenna or to determine the resistor power rating for desired specications.