Abstract
A miniaturized high-gain flexible unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) antenna is presented in this study. The proposed antenna basically comprised of three parts of printed patch in series, etched on dielectric substrate. And, a flexible cable is loaded on the bottom of dielectric substrate. A coplanar waveguide (CPW) with asymmetric ground feeding structure is employed to provide good impedance matching. The surface current can achieve the same phase for the straight-line patch and the flexible cable, through adjusting the dimensions of the meander line patch, which increases radiation gain while maintaining the compact size. As an important merit to be highlighted, the flexible cable can greatly reduce the volume and aerodynamic drag of the antenna. It has a low-profile compact size of 196 × 15 × 0.8 mm3 (excluding flexible cable). The results show that the omnidirectional gain fluctuates within 4.5 ± 0.1 dBi in the desired band (902 MHz–928 MHz), which is high enough for the UAV application. Details of the antenna design and experimental results are presented and discussed.
Highlights
The applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted lots of attention in the area of communication, military, and commercial market. ey are widely used for exploration, reconnoiter, and multimedia communication
The ratio of flight distance and height is large for the UAVs, which determines that the radiation pattern of the antenna must be omnidirectional in the horizontal plane [1,2,3,4,5]
A miniaturized high-gain flexible UAV antenna, which consists of a straight-line patch, a meander line, and a flexible cable printed on a dielectric substrate, has been proposed, fabricated, and tested. e flexible cable can be bent when the drone lands on the ground, whereas be straight when taking off
Summary
The applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted lots of attention in the area of communication, military, and commercial market. ey are widely used for exploration, reconnoiter, and multimedia communication. The ratio of flight distance and height is large for the UAVs, which determines that the radiation pattern of the antenna must be omnidirectional in the horizontal plane [1,2,3,4,5] In view of these factors, antennas are required to have small effective area, slight weight, and omnidirectional radiation. Low costs, vertical polarization, and omnidirectional radiation coverage of monopoles in the azimuth plane make them very attractive for UAV applications. International Journal of Antennas and Propagation speaking, monopole or dipole antennas have been widely used in wireless communication systems because of simple structures, low costs, and omnidirectional radiation pattern, which offer advantages in UAVs’ applications. As an important advantage to be highlighted, its maximum gain is up to 4.56 dBi, which is about 2.2 dBi higher than traditional dipole antennas, and the flying distance can be achieved about 1.2 times longer
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