Rivera-Albino, Alix

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    Vivaldi antenna array for a solid state space distributed amplifier
    (2009) Rivera-Albino, Alix; Rodríguez-Solís, Rafael A.; College of Engineering; Colom-Ustariz, José; Sepúlveda-Alancatro, Nelson; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Hajek, Darrell
    This work reports the design of a Vivaldi antenna array for a space distributed solid state amplifier at X-Band and the specifications in the amplifier design. A tray configuration inside an over-moded waveguide is used. The waveguide operates in its TE30 mode, which allows for 3, 6 or 9 trays to be positioned for increasing power generation. Each tray has four class-E amplifiers, and the input and output devices to each of the amplifiers are Vivaldi antennas. This work shows the tapered-slot antennas design for the desired impedance based on their tray position. The two center antennas and the two edge antennas on each tray are kept with same dimensions to simplify the Design of Experiments analysis. It was found that although the center frequency of operation is shifted up 3MHz when comparing 3, 6 and 9 trays configurations, the antenna behavior does not change significantly. Thus, the same antenna design can be used for all trays. The antennas were simulated, built and tested for an input impedance of 65 Ω, and simulated for 24 Ω and 50 Ω. Because of the difficulty to build low impedance antennas, only antennas of 50 Ω were used. This required matching networks to provide the required transistor impedance to act as a class- E module. A stub at the second harmonic is added to the 50 Ω design in order to decrease the power consumption of the transistor. The class-E module design and the setup to test it are reported. Finally, the complete tray to implement the spatially distributed amplifier is shown.