Research on the Radiation Properties of Tapered Slot Magnetoelectric Antenna

advent of acoustically mediated magnetoelectric (ME) antennas offers a new idea for miniaturizing antennas. The ME antenna operates at mechanical resonant frequencies, so its dimension can be reduced by three orders of magnitude compared to an electric antenna counterpart. However, the poor directional radiation property of the reported magnetoelectric antennas, which is similar to an ideal magnetic dipole, limits the use of the ME antennas. In this paper, we propose a tapered slot magnetoelectric (TSME) antenna which is composited of PZT-5H and Metglas with dimensions of 50 mm x 30 mm x 0.596 mm and an operating frequency of around 30 kHz. Inspired by the structure of the slot-coupled antenna, the structure of the magnetostrictive layer of the ME antenna has been modified, and the front-back radiation difference in the near field has been improved by 7.9 dB compared to a normal ME antenna. The different operating principles between the TSME antenna and normal ME antennas have been analyzed and verified in the paper. In addition, we have successfully implemented amplitude modulation (AM) signals transmission using TSME antennas. This work provides new ideas for improving the radiation performance of ME antennas and lays the foundation for their practical application.