Designing a Cavity Backed Microstrip Antenna with Enhanced Isolation for the Development of a Continuous Wave Ground Penetrating Radar

Abstract

This paper presents an improved design of a rectangular microstrip antenna at 920 MHz by backing it with an appropriate cavity wall to enhance the isolation between the transmitter and receiver antenna for use in applications, where the weak received power gets masked by the direct coupled power between two antennas. Antennas having 0.12 λ cavity wall with separation gap of 0.36 λ resulted in an isolation of 52.6 dB at a resonance frequency of 920 MHz with maximum and minimum isolation of 71.4 dB and 49.1 dB, respectively for 5% BW of the antenna designed. These antennas were fabricated and tested, which are used in the development of Continuous Wave Ground Penetrating Radar with an online graphical user interface; leading to the validation of the usefulness of proposed antennas. The isolation achieved at an optimised separation of the antennas enabled detection of metal targets as small as a bunch of wire buried 20 cm in the soil and non-metal, like wood and plastic buried in soil. It enabled the detection of a circular steel target of radius 12.5 cm buried at a depth of 65 cm in loose semi-dry pebbled soil.