A Slot-Connected Cavity Design With Corresponding Equivalent Circuit Model Analysis for Fully Metallic 3-D Vivaldi Antenna for Wireless Power Telemetry Applications

Abstract

This paper presents the design of fully metallic 3D Vivaldi antenna that can be used for wireless power transmission applications. The 3D antenna consists of 1) a tapered profile, 2) a rectangular cavity, and 3) a horizontal slot cut that is used as a transition between the cavity and the tapered profile. The proposed antenna design is fabricated using two distinct approaches, the first of which is a 3D metal additive manufacturing (AM scheme) with a sequential material layer addition technique. The second version is based on the CNC milling (CNCM) technique implemented by selectively removing material in a controlled way. The measured gain of the AM and CNCA-based 3D Vivaldi antenna is 4.95 dBi, and 5.70 dBi, respectively. The measured bandwidth (BW) of the AM-based 3D antenna is 4.70 GHz (fractional BW (FBW) of $52.86\%$ ), whereas the CNCM-based 3D antenna is 4.95 GHz (FBW of $56.73\%$ ). Measurement outcomes indicate that the CNCM version of the 3D Vivaldi antenna is $\sim ~1.2x$ more effective than the AM version in terms of realized gain and can be used for metal-based antenna system power telemetry due to its high gain and wide operational bandwidth capability.

Keywords

• All-metal antenna
• slot-connected cavity
• 3D vivaldi antenna
• CNC manufacture
• additive manufacture
• wireless power transfer (WPT)