Design of Ultra-Wide Band Metal-Mountable Antenna for UHF Partial Discharge Detection

Abstract

This paper presents an ultra-wideband metal-mountable antenna used in the ultra-high-frequency (UHF) partial discharge (PD) detection. The designed antenna combines a coplanar waveguide antenna and multilayer substrates to effectively broaden its bandwidth when mounted on a conductive surface. These substrates consist of two layers of FR-4 dielectric substrates and two layers of the absorbing gasket, which is adapted to absorb the reflected electromagnetic signals. The parametric study is conducted to optimize antenna performance. A prototype is fabricated to confirm the design, and the measurement results show good agreement with the simulation. When mounted on the metal plate, the proposed antenna covers the UHF bandwidth of 400 MHz-3 GHz for S-{11} < -10 dB with a compact size (282 mm \times242 mm \times8.75 mm). As the thickness of the antenna is only 8.75 mm, the safety distance of electric insulation in electrical equipment will not be affected. A PD experiment has been carried out, and a reference antenna is used in the experiment for comparison. Compared with the conventional antenna, the proposed antenna has a better performance when mounted on the metal plate. It is shown that the designed antenna is a very good candidate for UHF PD detection inside of high-voltage equipment.