TY - THES A1 - Usman, M. ID - elediasc1232 AV - public PB - University of Trento TI - Optimization of a SPIRAL UWB antenna in PATCH configuration for [6-18]GHz band Y1 - 2013/// UR - http://www.eledia.org/students-reports/32/ M1 - masters N2 - Spiral antennas have numerous applications due to their wide bandwidth and circular polarization. Unfortunately, unless integrated with differential circuits, they generally suffer from two main disadvantages. First of all, their input impedance is not 50 ohms, and thus a wideband balun for impedance matching is required. Second, the central feeding leads to high fabrication cost, especially at high frequencies and makes planar array design more of a challenge. This project aims at synthesizing a PATCH spiral antenna through a Particle Swarm Optimizer (PSO), in order to obtain an UWB behavior inside the band between 6 and 18 GHz. ER -