Circular polarised stepped frequency ground penetrating radar for humanitarian demining

A cavity backed coplanar waveguide to coplanar strip - fed logarithmic uniplanar spiral antenna, which covers a 9 to I bandwidth with a return loss better than 10 dB from 0.4 to 3.8 GHz is presented. A wideband balun, with an insertion loss of less than 3 dB in the frequency band of operation, was developed for the balanced antenna feed. To aid the balun and antenna design, a method of moment computer program, was used to predict the performance of the spiral antenna. Measurements in an anechoic are made in order to verify the simulated far-field radiation pattern, the simulated polarisation, and the simulated input impedance. Additional advantage of the fabricated antenna is the low cost FR-4 substrate used for the antenna combined with the advantages of the uniplanar circuit, makes this configuration suitable as a low-cost wideband antenna. The constructed uniplanar spiral antenna is very well suited to be used in a stepped frequency ground penetrating radar for humanitarian demining due to the very wide bandwidth, relative small size. Successful detection of a small 5.4 cm non-metallic AP-mines in a pseudo minefield are presented.