An Ultra-wideband monolithic active balun

Many Ultra-WideBand Electronic Warfare (UWB EW) systems cover the band from 0.5 GHz to 18.0 GHz, which corresponds to a relative bandwidth of 36:1. Such multi-octave systems often require critical design of RF components and circuits. One of the key issues for UWB EW systems is the realization of directional antennas for a multioctave bandwidth. To this purpose, a planar self-complementary antenna design approach has demonstrated significant performances. This solution provides differential mode signal with an output impedance of 60π ohms, which is one half of the space impedance. The output signal of the antenna requires RF broadband front-end modules with an input overload protection, an amplification stage, a Balun and an high impedance drive with minimized group delays.