A Review of Passive and Active Ultra-Wideband Baluns for Use in Ground Penetrating Radar

Microwave ultra-wideband technology has been widely adopted in instrumentation and measurement systems, including ground-penetrating radar (GPR) sensors. Baluns are essential components these systems to feed balanced antennas from unbalanced cables. typically introduced avoid issues with return signals, asymmetrical radiation patterns In GPR can cause poor sensitivity due a reduction radiated power, blind spots changes the pattern additional clutter common mode radiation. The different balun technologies currently available exhibit wide variation performance characteristics such as insertion loss, reflection coefficient phase balance, well physical properties size manufacturability. this study, of two magnetic transformer baluns, tapered microstrip baluns an active based on high-speed amplifiers were investigated, all up frequencies 6 GHz. A radio frequency current probe was used measure currents cables that occur performing baluns. It found commercially have best linearity, while also having highest losses. design at low frequencies, while, high its is similar other tested. had lowest