A low-profile ultra-wideband hexagonal-patch antenna for UAV-based applications

Abstract

ABSTRACT A compact, low-profile, and ultra-wideband antenna is always desirable for airborne Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) applications. In this paper, an ultra-wideband monopole antenna is presented with the benefit of a compact and low-profile design structure. The antenna design enables efficient communication without interfering with the UAV’s other components. The antenna is designed using a slotted-hexagonal-patch fed from a co-planar microstrip feed. The bow-tie-shaped slot along with a few other rectangular-shaped parasitic slots are loaded in the hexagonal patch for bandwidth enhancement. The coplanar feed with top ground offers minimum interference with the UAV structure. The non-conducting bottom plane allows seamless integration without causing any interference to the antenna. An equivalent circuit model (ECM) of the proposed antenna is also developed. The antenna structure is fabricated and the measured results are validated. A good agreement between the measured and simulated results is observed. The antenna covers an ultra-wideband ranging from 3 GHz to 13.5 GHz with a maximum gain of 4.0dBi. The size of the antenna is 0.24λ0 ×0.29λ0 ×0.01λ0. The developed antenna, therefore, demonstrates that it is a strong contender for ultra-wideband UAV-based applications.